Exit polls put the RN of Marine Le Pen on 34 percent with President Emmanuel Macron’s alliance trailing in third in the first round of parliamentary elections.
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has made huge gains to win the first round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections, according to exit polls, as political dealmaking began among rival parties to keep the RN from power and protesters gathered in major cities.
Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe projected Marine Le Pen’s RN to win about 34 percent of the votes, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition about 29 percent, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance in third spot with about 20.3 percent.
Macron stunned the country by calling the snap election after the RN surged in European Parliament elections last month, gambling that the anti-immigration party with historical links to anti-Semitism would not repeat that success at the national level.
At party leader Marine Le Pen’s Henin-Beaumont constituency in northern France, supporters waved French flags and sang the Marseillaise.
“The French have shown their willingness to turn the page on a contemptuous and corrosive power,” she told the cheering crowd.
RN President Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protege and candidate for prime minister, pointed out that the second round would be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic”.
Source: Aljzeera
