A crushing blow for Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance
A big turnout for Le Pen’s hard right makes clear the president’s gamble backfired spectacularly
A DRAMATIC NEW era began in France on June 30th when Marine Le Pen’s hard-right party took a massive lead in first-round voting for the lower house of parliament. Her National Rally (RN) has never been so close to governing France. Official results showed that the RN had secured 33.2% of the vote. IPSOS, a pollster, estimated that, as France now heads to a final run-off vote on July 7th, this puts it on course to win 230-280 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, up from 88, and become easily the biggest group in parliament. A result at the upper end of that range would put the RN in touching distance of an overall majority of 289.
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