- Please regularly refresh this page for latest reports, which appear top of page. A brief guide to the elections can be found at the bottom of the page. All indicated times are local (CET). For our live coverage of the first round on June 30th, click here.
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We're wrapping our coverage here. The precise results are still to come, and they should be in about midday on Monday. But the broad picture from the predictions of exit polls, which we've been reporting on through the evening as they have been fine-tuned, stand. Namely that it is the leftwing alliance, the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) which has taken the largest single number of seats in parliament, but no absolute majority has been reached.
The far-right Front National, which just last weekend, after the first round of voting, appeared on the cusp of winning an absolute majority with which to form a government, has come in third place in terms of numbers of seats, behind Emmanuel Macron's coalition of centre-right parties, Ensemble.
It will be a hung parliament and the challenge to form a new government will be great. Not only is the leftwing alliance, the NFP, made up of very different and rival parties, but any alliance between them and the centre-right appears highly unlikely, if not impossible. The far-right Rassemblement National is in no position to form a government, and it might be argued that with the situation that has emerged this evening, would not want to. If a minority government is not possible, then the alternative would be a government of technocrats, which is probably the least advisable solution in face of an angry electorate.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron has lost his previous relative majority and, many would argue across the political divide, his credibility, after plunging the country into such a deep crisis by calling elections which otherwise were due in 2027, the year when he reaches the end of his last, unrenewable, presidential term.
France has avoided a far-right victory, but now enters a daunting period of uncertainty, where danger lurks both at home and abroad. Before the beginning of June, few if any could have imagined this dramatic, and avoidable, turn of events in France.
Thanks for following our coverage and don't miss our reports and analysis through the coming week.
Goodnight!
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00.20am: Outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal (see 9.42pm) has kept his seat in the Hauts-de-Seine département that borders western Paris, garnering 58.17% of votes cast.
00.15am: Speaking on TV channel TF1 this evening, RN figurehead Marine Le Pen said of today’s results: “I have too much experience to be disappointed by a result where we double our number of MPs.”
She blamed the failure of her party to come in first place on the strategy of the NFP and some on the centre-right of withdrawing their candidates in favour of rivals who had a better chance of beating the RN candidate. Those situations are based on the number of votes cast in the first round in constituencies where the result ended in three or more candidates going through to the second round. “If there had not been these massive withdrawals, the RN would tonight be very largely in a situation of an absolute majority,” claimed Le Pen. “The operation worked, perhaps beyond the expectations of its promoter, Emmanual Macron, who finds himself in an untenable situation.”
“Our victory is, in reality, simply postponed,” she said. “I see the whole of the ferments which are those of the victory tomorrow. In tens and tens of constituencies, we made 47%, 48% or 49%. They will be constituencies won during the next parliamentary elections.” She concluded that “the tide continues to rise, even if it didn’t rise high enough this time”.
11.50pm: A further illustration of the divisions that have emerged within the radical-left LFI in recent times: its prominent MP Clémentine Autain, who earlier called for leftwing MPs to elect their candidate to be PM (see 10.11pm) tomorrow, has now said she will no longer sit with the LFI in the Assembly. The MP said that she “well understood” that she was “no longer part” of the LFI group. At the start of the election campaign the LFI dropped a number of former MPs as candidates – including Alexis Corbière who was nevertheless elected tonight in his seat in the Paris region. Meanwhile another LFI dissident, the MP and journalist François Ruffin, has also been re-elected in his constituency in northern France.
11.40pm: In the Nord département of north-east France, which borders that of the Pas-de-Calais département, where it has taken the vast majority of seats, the RN has largely failed today to build on the success of the first round, when it won six of the département’s 15 seats. Today it comfortably won one, but failed in the eight other constituencies, including that of interior minister Gérald Darmanin.
So while it took in all seven of the 15 constituencies of the Nord, the centre-right alliance ensemble took five seats, as did the conservative LR party and its allies, while the NFP leftwing alliance took four.
That might be interpreted as at least in part a result of the strategy adopted by the NFP, and some among the centre-right, for candidates to stand-down in the second round to hand votes to another who has a better chance of beating the RN candidate.
11.31pm: Macron's former prime minister Élisabeth Borne has held onto her seat in Normandy in a contest against a far-right candidate. Her victory came after a candidate from the Left had earlier stood down to ensure the anti-far-right vote was not split. This is very much the story of today's vote; more than 200 first-round candidates who had made it through to the second round stood down to make sure that the far-right could be beaten in head-to-head contests with someone from the Left or centre-right. The outcome appears to be that the RN will have only the third largest group of MPs in the Assembly. Just a few days ago it had appeared likely from the polls that they would be the single biggest party in the Assembly.
11.19pm: While some high-profile Macron supporters have kept their seats (see 11.03pm below) others have fallen. This includes the former health minister and former government spokesperson Olivier Véran who has tonight announced that he has lost his seat in the south-east of France. Véran was President Macron's health minister during the Covid pandemic. He said on X that his defeat took second place to the fact that the country had “once again” said no to the far-right. “We came close. Let's cherish that which unites us,” he said.
11.15pm: The RN today won four seats in the Pas-de-Calais département (county) in north-east France, after winning six outright in the first round last Sunday, giving the far-right party a massive presence in the département with ten out of a total of 12 constituencies. The two others were won by the centre-right alliance Ensemble.
11.08pm: Hard-right MP Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (who prefers to call himself a sovereigntist), who once saw himself as Marine Le Pen's prime minister if she had won the presidential elections in 2017, has lost his seat in parliament after 27 years as an MP. He was fighting for his re-election against two other candidates, and lost to the leftwing NFP alliance candidate Béranger Cernon.
Dupont-Aignan, who while an ever-present candidate in French national elections – he has run in vain for the presidency on three occasions – has remained a figure of marginal influence on the Right.
11.03pm: Though this snap election has been bad for Macron's centre-right alliance – it will no longer have a majority and is set to be the second bloc in the Assembly behind the Left – it has fared rather better than many predicted. The latest projection from Elabe for BFMTV suggests the 'Ensemble' alliance and allies should have between 157 and 163 MPs in the new Assembly (it had 245 last time). One of them will be the former president of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, who has won in her seat near Paris after a three-way contest with the NFP and the conservative Right.
10.50pm: It is already clear tonight that there are differences in approach about how to react to tonight's results between leading figures in the NFP alliance. Asked about Jean-Luc Mélenchon's call for President Macron to appoint someone from the ranks of the NFP as prime minister (see 10.25pm below), the socialist Raphaël Glucksmann struck a more cautious tone. “The NFP is the leading force in the National Assembly but let’s tell the truth, we don't have an absolute majority,” he said. “We will have to learn to discuss and debate.”
According to him, there needs to be a “cultural revolution” in the country. “The executive will now be subordinate to MPs deputies. It is the end of the Jupiterianism of the Fifth Republic,” the Euro MP added, in a reference to the president's lofty statements and approach when first elected in 2017. Questioned again on the prospect of seeing someone from the NFP as PM, Raphaël Glucksmann said in a reference to Mélenchon's liking for a key figure of the French Revolution : “There is no longer any Jupiterianism but no Robespierre either. We will have to be responsible.”
10.43pm: “I don’t know who can celebrate the results this evening, neither on the Left, nor on the Right and also neither on the centre,” said Marion Maréchal, the 34-year-old niece of RN figurehead Marine Le Pen and granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party, when it was first called the Front National. She rallied the RN’s rival and marginal far-right party Reconquête, for which she stood for, and obtained, a seat in European Parliament elections, but has been expelled from the party after attempting to bring Reconquête into the RN fold during the parliamentary election campaign.
“Because the drama tonight is that France is ungovernable, I don’t know for how long, while our country is at an extremely low ebb at every level, that this Assembly [parliament] is not representative of what the French really think because we’ll perhaps tomorrow have a government which will pull to the Left,” she added.
“I take one lesson from what has happened. Because today, there are those who have an enormous responsibility for this result, in particular the Républicains [conservatives] who maintained [candidates] against [those from] the RN-Ciotti coalition in order to save around 50 MPs.”
10.25pm: In characteristically forthright fashion, the LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon has further stepped up the pressure on President Macron tonight. After his initial reaction to the exit polls tonight (see below at 8.12pm and 8.23pm), the former presidential candidate has now told supporters at the Place de la République in Paris that the head of state should either “nominate a prime minister from our ranks or leave”.
10.20pm: Radio France political journalist Frédéric Says has been studying the gains and losses of seats for the parties, according to the Ipsos-Talan predictions, compared with the last parliamentary elections in 2022, and represented them in percentage points in a post on X tonight.
According to Says, the PS (socialists) has increased its numbers of seats in parliament by 109%, the RN is up by 58%, and the Greens have risen by 47%. Except for the LR, which he finds keeps the same number of seats as previously, he reports all the others are down: Macron’s Renaissance party has lost 42% of its seats, and its fellow centre-right parties in the Ensemble alliance, the MoDem and Horizons, have lost 27% and 13% respectively.
10.11pm: As mentioned below, there seems no easy route to forming a government with the likely configuration of MPs in the new Assembly. So who might be the next prime minister now that the current government no longer has any kind of majority and that Macron's PM Gabriel Attal has announced he is resigning? One person who won't be PM is the former president François Hollande. Newly-elected as an MP at Tulle in central France, the former head of state has ruled himself out of that. “I'm not a candidate to head the government,” he declared tonight. Hollande is, incidentally, the second former president to become an MP since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1984.
But meanwhile MP Clémentine Autain from the radical left LFI – a key part of the leftwing NFP alliance – has urged leftwing MPs to meet at the Assembly this Monday to vote for the candidate who is best-placed to be prime minister, adding that this should be neither her own party boss Jean-Luc Mélenchon nor the aforementioned François Hollande.
Calling on President Macron not to “brutalize Parliament,” Autain hoped that “the Front Populaire in its diversity, would be able to say what is the point of equilibrium that allows us to govern,” a point of equilibrium which can be “neither Hollande nor Mélenchon”.
10.08pm: Revised predictions from Ipsos-Talan give the NFP leftwing alliance 171-187 seats in parliament, followed by 152-163 for Emmanuel macron’s Ensemble centre-right alliance, and 134-152 seats for the RN.
LR and its conservative allies are given 63-68 seats, various leftwing groups not allied with the NFP are given 14-16 seats, non-aligned centrists 7-8 seats, and others between 9-10.
With the certainty that no absolute majority exists, and notably given the makeup of the leftwing and centre-right alliances, forming a new government will be a very challenging task. No new parliamentary elections can be called before a year.
9.58pm: The chairman of the conservative LR party, Eric Ciotti, who caused outrage and efforts to remove him after entering into an electoral alliance with the RN, has kept his seat in the French Riviera city of Nice.
Laurent Wauquiez, who is likely to bid for the leadership of his LR party following the divisions caused by the alliance of Ciotti with the far-right, has won his seat in south-central France, coming in with a 60.59% share of votes cast in face of the RN candidate.
The X (Twitter) account of the party, which in the latest predictions has won up to 68 seats (excluding those party candidates who won on a joint RN/LR ticket) proudly declared: “We made the choice to remain faithful to our values. The choice of independence was the right one. We are coming back stronger. Thanks to the French for their confidence [in us]."
To all apearances, Ciotti is sitting on an ejector seat and a hand is approaching the "go" button.
9.55pm: Union leaders have tonight welcomed both the fact that the RN have failed to get a majority and the strong showing of the leftwing alliance, the NFP. “We've avoided the worst,” said the boss of the CFDT trade union Marylise Léon. Sophie Binet, the head the CGT, said the battle had only just begin. “The Republic and democracy won against the far-right despite the chaos created by Macron. We need change in our lives: the repeal of the pension reform, an increase in salaries and pensions. We're not giving up.”
9.50pm: Polish prime Minister Donald Tusk tonight posted on X (formerly Twitter): “In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief. Enough to be happy in Warsaw.”
9.42pm: More from outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal who has tonight announced his resignation (see below). Speaking from the PM's official residence Matignon he said: “Tonight, the extremes cannot win an outright majority.” And he welcomed the fact that his own camp, the 'Ensemble' coalition, had “held on” by obtaining “three times more MPs than given by certain estimates at the start of this election” and that it appeared to have come second behind the leftwing NFP alliance and ahead of the far-right NR.
“Being prime minister has been the honour of my life,” he continued, before noting that his centrist camp did not obtain a majority. He then declared: “Thus, faithful to the republican tradition and in accordance with my principles, tomorrow morning I will submit my resignation to the President of the Republic.
“I know that in light of this evening's results, many French people feel a form of uncertainty about the future, since no absolute majority has emerged. Our country is experiencing an unprecedented political situation and is preparing to welcome the world in a few weeks,” he continued, referring to the Paris Olympics which start on July 26th. He said he would stay on in post as long as duty required.
“Tonight a new era begins,” he added, stressing that France's destiny would be played out “more than ever in Parliament”.
9.40pm: A bit more from the speech tonight by RN chairman Jordan Bardella (seee 9.20pm). “The RN more than ever represents the only alternative in face of the unique party that tonight stretches from Philippe Poutou to Edouard Philippe,” he said, referring to the far-left figure and three-time presidential candidate Philippe Poutou and Emmanuel Macron’s first prime minister, founder of centre-right party Horizons and mayor of the northern city of Le Havre, Edouard Philippe.
“France is deprived of a majority, of a government to act, and a clear direction for recovery” Bardella, 28, said. “For several months now, a hope has risen and will never cease to blow. Tonight everything begins […] The RN is different from the others. It will not enter into any scheming political compromise.”
9.30pm: In a major development, the current prime minister Gabriel Attal has just announced that he will resign on Monday morning but will stay in post for “as long as duty requires”. The Macron protegé also took a sideswipe at his boss and mentor over the latter's shock decision to call these elections for the National Assembly. “I did not choose this dissolution, and I refused to put up with it,” he stated.
9.23pm: A key figure on the centre-right is Édouard Philippe, Macron's first prime minister, who now runs his own party Horizons. Philippe has not been slow in criticising his former boss's decision to dissolve the Assembly and tonight said that the move – intended to provided “clarity” - had simply led to “uncertainty”. The ex-PM ruled out any prospect of the presidential coalition working with either the far-right RN or the radical-left LFI, even though the latter is a key component of the NFP which looks set to be the largest bloc in the new Assembly. The mayor of Le Havre in northern France said that the absence of a clear majority could potentially endanger the “credibility” of the country. As a result “centrist political forces have a responsibility that they cannot walk away from”, Édouard Philippe said. He called for an “agreement which will stabilize the political situation” but one which “cannot be constructed either with Rassemblement National nor with La France Insoumise”. Even this form of agreement “will not be sustainable”, he said, but it would “allow the country to be managed as well as possible”.
9.20pm: RN chairman Jordan Bardella, who has been campaigning as France’s next prime minister if his party and its allies won an absolute majority – and which the first-round results suggested it would – gave a speech this evening in which he began by saying “the RN has today made the greatest breakthrough in all its history”, and thanked supporters for their “patriotic” stand against what he called “unnatural scheming political alliances”.
That was reference to the agreement by the leftwing alliance parties, and some of the Macronist Ensemble candidates, to stand down from the second round in constituencies where another candidate, whether from the Left or the Right, had a better chance of beating the standing RN candidate.
“Tonight, these electoral agreements throw France into the arms of the Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left,” he said, referring to the radical-left LFI party. “The dynamic behind the RN, which placed it very largely in first place in the first round, and which allows it to double its number of MPs, are the constituent elements of its victory tomorrow.”
9.05pm: In what is the first presidential reaction on the election projections, the Élysée has said that Emmanuel Macron will wait for the new National Assembly to take shape before taking the “necessary decisions” such as calling on a new prime minister. The Élysée Palace said the president was advising “caution” over the projected results, which could still change. It said that “at this stage” the head of state was still planning to go to Washington for the NATO summit this week, and he is due to leave on Wednesday.
8.55pm: Lots of commentators have been discussing whether a hung Parliament could in effect pave the way for a more Parliamentary style of government, with the National Assembly asserting itself against the power of the presidency. This appears to be the view of socialist Raphaël Glucksmann, who was head of the list for the socialists at the recent European elections. “The heart of power has been transferred to the Assembly and (…) it is a change in political culture which is necessary and which will be fundamental,” he said this evening. He also noted: “We're in the lead, but we are in a divided Assembly … and therefore we will have to behave like adults. We’re going to have to talk, we’re going to have to discuss, we’re going to have to have a dialogue.”
8.50pm: A note of caution: there are four major exit poll providers cited by the French media. We have reported on the Ipsos-Talan polls for the major French public broadcasters, which proved largely accurate in the first round. But when taking the Ipsos-Talan predictions alongside those of Ifop (for private TV channel TF1), OpinionWay for TV channel CNews, radio station Europe1, and the weekly JDD, and Harris interactive for TV channel M6, radio station RTL and the magazine Challenges, the slight variations mean that who will finally be in the second and third places in terms of numbers of seats could upset the initial forecasts.
All give the NFP leftwing alliance in first place, but there are overlaps in the predicted number of seats for Ensemble and the RN, and that could just - although unlikely - change the order through the night.
8.47pm: More on those seat projections for the leftwing alliance, the NFP. They show that the balance of power within the alliance will now be fascinating to watch. In the last Assembly the old alliance known as NUPES was dominated by the radical-left LFI founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which had the lion's share of the NUPES seats. But if the projections tonight are correct the Socialist Party (PS) will get 63-69 seats, not far behind the 68-74 seats predicted for LFI. And with the greens set to get 32-36 seats and the communists 10 to 16 seats, the balance of power appears to have tilted slightly away from the LFI.
8.39pm: One of the first to voice their opinion from the Macron camp was former minister Clément Beaune. “Millions of French people voted to protect what is essential, often by making an effort or a sacrifice. Let's first of all pay tribute to them. Clarity and mobilization against the far-right are paying off. But let's also understand the anger, particularly social, which has been strongly expressed.”
8.37pm: Key figures from the leftwing alliance were tonight clearly relishing the somewhat unexpected emergence of the NFP as the likely biggest bloc in the National Assembly. Socialist Raphaël Glucksmann, who was head of the socialist list for the recent European elections, told France 2 that the French Parliament could function like the European Parliament, with majorities decided issue by issue. “What has won today is a humanist France which does not want [Rassemblement National] in power,” he declared.
Meanwhile Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) made clear the NFP would not simply form an immediate or automatic alliance with other groups in the National Assembly. “We will not be part of any coalition of opposites which would betray the vote of the French,” he wrote on X.
8.35pm: Among the parties making up the centre-right alliance Ensemble, forecast by Ipsos-Talan to become the second-largest group in parliament, Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party is credited with between 95-105 seats, its MoDem party ally between 31-37 seats, and the party founded by Macron’s first prime minister, Edouard Philippe, is given between 24-28 seats.
Meanwhile, the number of seats by party within the NFP leftwing alliance is given by Ipsos-Talan as follows: the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) with 68-74 seats, closely followed by the Parti Socialiste with 63-69 seats, the EELV greens with 32-36 seats and the Parti Communiste with 10-16 seats.
8.23pm: More from that Jean-Luc Mélenchon's speech. He said that in government the NFP would implement “its programme, nothing but its programme, but all its programme”. This includes the repealing of the legislation that put up the retirement age from 62 to 64, freezing the prices of basic commodities, an increase in the minimum wage, and so on. All these measures “can be taken by decree, without a vote” he said. “We refuse to enter into negotiations with [President Emmanuel Macron's] party to make deals, especially after having relentlessly fought against his policy of social mistreatment and environmental inaction for the past seven years,” said the former presidential candidate.
Interestingly, though, he said nothing about who should be prime minister – a major bone of contention within the NFP, with many of those in the alliance having made clear they would not want Mélenchon in that post.
8.22pm: To be noted in the Ipsos-Talan predictions is that the forecast for the far-right RN party include between 12 and 16 seats for those from the conservative LR party who stood on a joint RN-LR ticket. The LR leader Eric Ciotti divided his party with his decision during the election campaign to enter into an electoral alliance with the RN. The expected results tonight would undoubtedly be followed by a heated and highly damaging further split among the conservatives, once a party of government but who have been in constant decline since Macron’s arrival as president in 2017.
8.17pm: The remaining forecast of the Ipsos-Talan exit polls place the conservative Les Républicains party in fourth place with between 57 and 67 seats. In fifth place come the various independent leftwing MPs who are not part of the broad leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance, with between 13 and 16 seats. The centre-right MPs independent of the Macron-supporting Ensemble alliance are estimated to have between six and eight seats, with between eight and 11 seats going to the various other candidates who are not part of any major party or group.
8.12pm: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of La France Insoumise (LFI), the largest party in the NFP, was quick to greet the leftwing alliance's emergence as the likely largest bloc in the new National Assembly. Within minutes of the exit polls being published, Mélenchon called on President Macron to ask the NFP to form the next government.
“A magnificent upswell of civic mobilisation has emerged! Our people have clearly rejected the worst solution for them. It's an immense relief for millions of people in our country. These people felt terribly threatened. Let them be reassured; they have won,” declared Mélenchon.
He continued: “No subterfuge, arrangement, or combination will be acceptable. Indeed, the lessons of the vote are unequivocal. The defeat of the president and his coalition is clear. The president must give way.”
“The president has a duty to call on the Nouveau Front Populaire to govern,” insisted Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “They are ready.”
8.10pm: According to the Ipsos-Talan polls, the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) leftwing alliance (NFP) has come in first place, with Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right alliance Ensemble in second place, and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in third place.
The forecast gives the NFP between 172 and 192 seats out of the 577 in the National Assembly, the lower and most powerful house of parliament. Ensemble is given as having won between 150 and 170 seats, with the RN garnering between 132 and 152 seats.
8.03pm: Former socialist president François Hollande, who was head of state from 2012 to 2017, has been elected as an MP for the constituency of Tulle in central France as part of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). He obtained around 43% of the vote.
8.01pm: The far-right Rassemblement National party has not won an absolute majority, and no party or alliance will have an absolute majority, according to first exit-poll estimations based by Ipsos-Talan for public broadcasters France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24, RFI and LCP.
7.47pm: Added to the election in this second round of Emmanuel Tjibaou in New Caledonia, making him the first New Caledonian pro-independence MP since 1986, is also the re-election of Nicolas Metzdorf, an-anti independence centre-right MP.
7.35pm: in last Sunday’s first round, 76 Members of Parliament (MPs) were elected outright after gaining more than 50% of votes cast (see the guide to the elections at the bottom of this page), which then left 501 others out of the National Assembly’s 577 seats to be decided today.
That number is now reduced to 500 after the election already declared in this second round in New Caledonia, the troubled French Pacific Ocean territory, of pro-independence MP Emmanuel Tjibaou. He is the son of the late New Caledonian independence movement leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989.
New Caledonia has been in a state of crisis since the French government announced changes to the electoral system on the archipelago, allowing recently arrived settlers on the island voting rights which disadvantaged the indigenous Kanak people (see more here, here, and here). Following his election today, Emmanuel Tjibaou declared that the high turnout had “impressed” him, and that it represented “a call for help” and a “cry of hope”.
Of the 76 who were elected as MPs in the first round vote, 39 were standing for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party (one of them as a joint conservative-RN candidate), while 32 others elected then represented the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) broad leftwing alliance. The remainder were made up of two from Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble centre-right alliance, one from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, and two independent rightwing candidates.
7pm: Turnout today in mainland France and Corsica has been very strong for a general election in France, echoing the turnout in the first round last Sunday.Turnout in the 501 constituencies up for grabs in this second round had reached 26.63% by midday, and 59.71% by 5pm, according to the interior ministry. That compares with 18.99% and 38.11% respectively in the second round of the last parliamentary elections in 2022.
Today’s turnout by 5pm was slightly up – by 0.32% – on the first round, and is the highest in a second round in parliamentary elections since 1981 (when it reached 61.4%), which followed in the wake of what was then regarded as the seismic election of a socialist president, François Mitterrand.
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A brief guide to the elections
How they work:
The parliamentary elections will choose the 577 members (MPs) of the French Parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly. Usually they are for a five-year term which runs in parallel with the five-year term of the president. But these snap elections are different; they are taking place after President Emmanuel Macron chose on June 9th to dissolve the National Assembly where his Renaissance party and allies did not have a working majority. Under the French Constitution no new Parliamentary elections can now be held for at least a year.
In mainland France, polling stations open at 8am and close at 6pm in rural constituencies, and at 8pm in cities and large towns.
These elections are being held over two rounds, on June 30th and July 7th. Some MPs may be elected in the first round if they gain a more than 50% share of votes cast, and only if that represents 25% or more of the total number of registered voters.
In practice, the vast majority of results are only decided in the second round, in a first-past-the-post system in each constituency. To reach the second round, candidates must garner the votes of more than 12.5% of the number of registered voters in the first round.
There are around 49.5 million registered voters in mainland France and its overseas départements (counties). The latter have eight MPs out of the total 577, while 11 other MPs represent virtual constituencies representing French citizens living abroad.
The National Assembly is the key law-making chamber. Members of the less powerful upper house, the Senate, are chosen in separate elections, in a region-by-region vote involving only local elected officials.
What’s at stake:
By announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly on the evening of June 9th, just as the Rassemblement National (RN) was registering historic scores in the European elections, Emmanuel Macron has accelerated the political calendar. He has thrown into turmoil a country that, for the first time since 1945, is at risk of handing the keys of power to the far-right.
In the space of three weeks the political landscape has been completely upended. The various forces within it have forged alliances that would have seemed inconceivable until just a very short time ago. The leftwing factions have united at record speed under the banner of the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) or NFP, the conservative Right has splintered after its leader entered an electoral coalition with the far-right, the centre-right presidential majority appears to have imploded, and the far-right has calmly advanced towards its goal of gaining an absolute majority with which to form a government.