Please regularly refresh this page for latest reports, which appear top of page. A brief guide to the elections and the candidates can be found at the bottom of this page. All times local (CET).
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UPDATE on final results and turnout (Monday June 12th).
The final results of the share of votes cast in the June 11th first round of France’s legislative elections are as follows:
Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche party and its centre-right ally MoDem: 32.32%
The conservative Les Républicains party and its independent allies: 21.56%
The far-right Front National party: 13.2%
The radical-left France Insoumise party: 11.02%
The Socialist Party and its independent allies: 9.51%
The Green EELV party: 4.3%
The communist Party: 2.72%
The hard-right sovereignist Debout La France party: 1.17%
Far-left parties: 0.77%
Other independents: 3.41%
The turnout was a record low 48.71% (an abstention rate of 51.29%)
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1.55am: That's it for us tonight. We'll be back Monday with a final official count here, plus more reporting and analysis on our feature pages. Thank you for following us.
1.50am: In terms of votes cast this Sunday, the same Ipsos-led poll gives the following percentages, to be confirmed Monday with the official figures released by the French interior ministry: Emmanuel Macron’s REM party and its centre-right MoDem allies garnered 32% of votes cast, followed by the conservative Les Républicains and allied centre-right UDI party with 21.2% of the vote.
The share for the far-right Front National party was 13.9%.
The radical-left France Insoumise party received a 10.9% share, followed by the Socialist Party on 10%. The Communist Party and the green EELV party both equaled 3.3%. The hard-right sovereignist France Debout party came next with 1.2% of votes cast, followed by the far-left parties totalling 0.8%. The remaining independent political groups accounted for a total of 3.4%.
The remainder was made up of spoiled and blank votes.
1.40am: An Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimation for state broadcasters France Télévisions and Radio France and weekly news magazine Le Point, regarded as the most authoritative tonight, estimates the following results at the end of the legislative elections which are finalized next weekend in the playoff second-round vote. These concern most of the constituencies where this Sunday only a few were decided outright, meaning that a candidate has secured more than a 50% share of votes cast, and a more than 12.5% share of votes that represent all of the registered voters.
In an election where more than one in two voters failed to take part, there is of course a margin of error if turnout increases significantly next Sunday, when the final result will be decided on a first-past-the-post basis. But in general the first-round score of Emmanuel Macron’s REM party candidates is so advanced over their rivals that there is little possibility that the broad figures will be proved wrong.
They tonight give Macron’s REM party between 415 and 455 seats out of the National Assembly’s total of 577. In second place would be between 70 and 110 seats for the alliance of the traditional Right, made up of the conservative Les Républicains party, the centre-right UDI and independent rightwing allies.
The broad traditional Left, made up of the Socialist Party, the Greens and the independent Left, are credited with attaining between 20 and 30 seats.
The radical-left and the Communist Party (in minority position) are forecast to win between eight and 18 seats.
The far-right Front National is predicted to win between one and five seats.
Other non-aligned parties are expected to take between seven and 12 seats.
1.05am: Socialist Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo called for a mobilisation of voters to turn out for the second round “to allow for truly social democrat, ecologist and [pro-] European voices to be present at the National Assembly.”
“I regret that several outgoing MPs, from the Left like also the Right, loyal and of service for Parisians, very committed to their mandate, were victims of these exceptional circumstances,” she added in a message posted on Facebook.
1 am: Other former socialist ministers under François Hollande’s government who lost their seats tonight were Christian Eckert (budget), Emmanuelle Cosse (housing), Christophe Sirugue (industry), Martine Pinville (trade), Juliette Méadel (women’s rights), and Kader Arif (war veterans).
11.30pm: We're taking a pause after which we'll be back with more reports and a summary of the results.
11.15pm: The list of leading party figures and veterans who tonight have either lost their parliamentary seats or lost their challenge for a parliamentary seat is impressive. Joining those already mentioned is Socialist Party presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, and veteran socialist Elisabeth Guigou. The far-right Front National election campaign director Nicolas Bay has been eliminated from the second-round playoff, just as has Marseille Socialist Party MP Patrick Mennucci, a local political ‘baron’ in a constituency fought in a bitter atmosphere against radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who now goes onto the second round playoff.
Meanwhile, former socialist prime minister Manuel Valls has come in lead position in his constituency south of Paris. Prime minister when Emmanuel Macron was economy minister, there is no secret of the two men’s fraught relations. But Valls rallied Macron’s presidential bid, repudiating the socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, and Macron’s REM party, while rejecting an alliance with him, subsequently placed no-one against him in his constituency, where he now faces a runoff against the radical-left candidate.
10.45pm: The conservative president of the Hauts-de-France region in northern France, Xavier Bertrand, has struck a different note from many of his colleagues on the Right. While they have for the most part been concerned about the turnout and mobilising the conservative troops for next week, Bertrand said the priority should be to ensure that Front National (FN) candidates don't win in the second round. The "candidates of Republican movements and parties" had to do all they could to “block far-right candidates”, he said, clearly calling for some candidates to pull out in the second round where others are better placed to defeat the FN.
10.40pm: Far-right Front National MP Gilbert Collard called on voters not to “desert democracy” after Sunday's turnout figures became apparent. “We have to call on voters, whoever they vote for, to come out. They can't desert democracy, that's not possible,” said the incumbent MP at Gard in the south of France who is an ally of Front National leader Marine Le Pen. Collard put much of the blame for poor voting numbers on the new president, claiming Emmanuel Macron was a “hypnotist” who had “succeeded in putting people to sleep politically and media-wise”.
10.35pm: Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis has lost his constituency in northern Paris, which he had represented for 20 years. The result is a severe blow for Cambadélis, who appeared intent on fighting to remain socialist leader despite the presidential election rout. That hope is now over.
The lead candidate for the second round in Cambadélis’s constituency is Mounir Mahjoubi, junior minister for digital affairs in Emmanuel Macron’s interim May-June government. Macron has made clear that any of the members of his government (formed immediately after his election last month) who fail to be elected as an MP will have to stand down.
10.20pm: As we reported earlier (see 9.40pm), Socialist Party leftwinger Aurélie Filippetti, former culture minister who stood down from the socialist government in protest at its austerity and business-friendly policies, has lost her constituency in north-east France where she was first elected in 2007. Since that report, she has appeared on the France 2 television channel election night special, when she deplored the Socialist Party’s perceived betrayal of its values. “It is a great disappointment, but it is difficult to fight against a wave,” she said. “When the Left no longer carries the values of the Left it is beaten. That is the lesson I take from this first round.”
10.15pm: The required appeals for voters to turn out next week and the fixation on the poor turnout has nevertheless not blinded senior figures on the Right as to how poorly their candidates have done in the first round. Bruno Retailleau, the man who coordinated François Fillon's doomed presidential campaign, admitted that the parliamentary results were “an undeniable defeat for our political family”. Retailleau, who is also president of the Pays de la Loire region in west-central France, said that many voters had voted for the “party label” of Macron's La République en Marche rather than for sitting local MPs who were “established and experienced”.
10.05pm: Alain Juppé, the conservative who had for much of 2016 appeared destined to be the next president, tonight called for the results of the first round of the Parliamentary elections to be “put into context” citing – inevitably – the turnout. “The French people wanted to give the president of the Republic the means to implement his manifesto,” said the mayor of Bordeaux who was defeated in the primary last November of the conservative Les Républicains party and its centre-right allies to choose a presidential candidate. “With this low turnout we have to put this result into context. The Right and the centre remain the second [political] grouping in this country. The stakes are clear: next Sunday we'll either have a monochrome Assembly or we'll have a group who will, in a constructive way, hold a democratic debate.”
9.55pm: The success of Emmanuel Macron's centrist movement in causing divisions on the Right were summed up this evening by the response of the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi. Once seen as a leading figure in the conservative Les Républicains party, he Tweeted his support of those colleagues on the Right who had joined forces with the new president's party. “I give my support to all those who want to take part in a diverse presidential majority to make France win,” he said, while regretting that he had “not been heard by the Les Républicains leaders”. Estrosi added: “By accepting the hand offered by Macron a certain number of our friends would doubtless not have been eliminated this evening.”
9.50pm: In François Hollande’s former constituency in the Corrèze département in central France, where he had been elected in every election since 1997 until not seeking re-election this year, his aspiring successor, Bernard Combes, mayor of Hollande’s fiefdom Tulle (where Hollande was also mayor over seven years), is in a weak position for the second round, coming in second place and with just more than half the votes cast (17.92%) for the REM candidate (32.51%).
Would anyone bet on who Hollande voted for?
9.43pm: The low turnout is really the main talking point for those on the Right. The latest is Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who stood as a sovereignist candidate in the president election before allying himself with front national leader Marine Le Pen, and who even claims the National Assembly will be undermined by it. “The abstentions this evening raise serious questions as to the legitimacy of the future Parliament,” said Dupont-Aignan, leader of the Debout la France ('France Arise') party.
9.40pm: More of former socialist president François Hollande’s ministers have met with humiliation today. Socialist Party leftwinger Aurélie Filippetti, ex-culture minister who stood down from government in protest at Hollande’s U-turn towards austerity and business-friendly policies, has been eliminated in her constituency in north-east France where she was first elected in 2007, coming in third place and below the required score to move on to the second round with just 11.8% of votes cast (representing 4.83% of registered voters). Infirst place came the REM candidate, followed by that of the Front National, both of whom will go on to the second round.
It was a similar scenario for Ségolène Neuville, who served three years as Hollande’s minister responsible for the elderly, who came third in her constituency in the lower Pyrenees region in south-west France, behind the REM candidate and that of the Front National who now go on to fight the seat next Sunday.
9.25pm: The president of the far-right Front National, Marine Le Pen, herself looks on course to become a Member of Parliament, having picked up around 45% of the vote in the first round in the seat in the Pas-de-Calais in northern France where she is standing. Yet she, too, raised the issue of the low turnout, claiming it gave rise to doubts about the very way the parliamentary elections are held. “This catastrophic abstention rate raises a question as to the method of the election,” she said. “These Parliamentary elections have raised no enthusiasm among the French people.” Le Pen said that “patriotic voters” had to turn out in the second round next Sunday to attack President Emmanuel Macron's “politics of austerity”.She said: “The abstentions show that we have some more voters to draw on.”
9.20pm: Communist Party leader Pierre Laurent underlined the low turnout today and called for a rethink on how the elections are held. “When you have 50% of people who don’t gop and vote, one must all the same think about the electoral system which devalues the legislative election,” he said, adding that the traditional holding of parliamentary elections weeks after the presidential ballot reduced their significance.
Laurent said he believed that for his party to gain enough MPs to form a parliamentary group “remains feasible”.
His comments on the abstention rate echo many others tonight among the parties that have suffered a trouncing at the hands of Macron’s REM party – which in effect means every party except the REM. The reactions are exactly as predicted by Mediapart political commentator Hubert Huertas in his pre-election analysis piece published on Mediapart’s English-language pages here.
9.12pm: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical-left France Insoumise movement, tonight recognised the landslide score of Macron’s REM party. “The results show a very clear lead of the president’s party,” he said. “They also show a totally unstable political situation, and [one that is] a trompe l'œil.There is not a majority to destroy the labour law, to cuddle the rich, and all things in the president’s programme.”
“It’s for us to convince the country that other things must be done. The France Insoumise, a new political movement, has put up a series of candidatures that are totally new,” he added, and called on the French electorate to “not give full powers to the president’s party”.
9.05pm: The far-right Front National admitted they were disappointed by their score in the first round, with a vote of around 14%, and heading in latest estimates for between three and ten seats after the final second round result. The party's vice-president Florian Philippot, standing as a candidate in Moselle in north-east France and who is himself through to the second round, blamed poor turnout for their inability to attract more support. “We've perhaps experienced a disappointment in the score and we have, I believe, paid the price of the abstentions. We know that when there's a strong abstention those who do the best are sitting candidates,” said Philippot, who called for a big turnout from supporters next week.
9.02pm: The former president of the National Assembly for Les Républicains (LR), Bernard Accoyer, said the results had been “disappointing for our political family”. He pointed out, though, that the conservative LR party and its centrist allies in the UDI were now the “second political force” in the country and said it was important that voters came out next week to support them in order to avoid France being faced with just “a single party”.
9pm: Matthias Fekel, the last interior minister to serve in François Hollande’s socialist government, was thumped in his constituency in the lot-et-Garonne département (county) in south-west France where he was elected amid the swing to the socialists during the last legislative elections in 2012. Tonight he came in third place, behind the first-placed REM candidate and the Front National.
8.55pm: An example of both the success of the REM tonight and also of the somewhat diluted political “renewal” it represents was the outright election today of Paul Molac in a constituency in the Morbihan in Brittany which Molac, the outgoing MP, represented for the Green EELV party until he jumped ship for Macron. He garnered 54% of votes cast, representing 28.7% of registered voters (to win outright in the first round a candidate must have more than 50% of votes cast and a share of the vote that represents at least 25% of all registered voters).
8.45pm: The head of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party campaign in the elections, François Baroin, was quick to point to a “level of abstention never seen before”. Baroin, who had campaigned for the defeated LR presidential candidate François Fillon in the presidential election, said the low turnout was a sign of “the persisting divisions in French society”. He said there needed to be a debate to “highlight the differences between our candidates and those of [La République en Marche]”. He said: “En Marche wants a tax shock equivalent to the one brought in by François Hollande … we can no longer accept more tax rises.” Baroin said the French people wanted “a balance of power” and urged voters to turn out in large numbers for the Right in the second round.
8.44 pm: Valérie Pécresse, a senior figure of the conservative les Républicains party, a former minister who is now the head of the council for the Greater Paris Region, has also admitted the landslide victory for Macron’s party and, like Cambadélis (see immediately below) has tonight warned of the prospect of a crushed opposition. “We’re taking the risk of [seeing] a single party, a single viewpoint, a single programme,” she said in a statement.
8.30pm: “With 50%, the abstention rate has this evening reached a historic level,” said Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis tonight, admitting a major victory for Emmanuel Macron’s party and a hammering for the socialists. “It is the sign of an immense democratic fatigue.”
“The first round of the elections is also marked by the notable decline of the Left in its totality, and notably the Socialist Party. As a result, the second round on next Sunday will be one of amplification [of the result] or of pluralism. Because if this absolute majority is amplified further, it will be virtually without true opposition.
“In an unstable world, our democracy cannot allow itself to be ill.”
8.25pm: The radical-left France Insoumise party is predicted to have scored far less than its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s share of the presidential election vote (19.58%). However, it appears ahead of the socialist Party (on 10.2%), which is a historically low score for the party of an outgoing government.
8.20pm: The Ipsos estimations suggest that the ballot box support for the Front National, which has steadily risen over recent years in local elections has collapsed. With around 14%, according to Ipsos, the far-right party can hope at best to have between four and five MPs, which is double the amount they had in the outgoing parliament, and a long way off predictions earlier this spring of up to 25 MPs.
8.15pm: The Ipsos estimations give Macron’s REM 32.2 % of votes cast, followed by the conservative Les Républicains at 21.5 %. It places the far-right Front National in third place with 14%, while the radical-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) is fourth on 11 %, and the Socialist Party fifth with 10.2 %. Joint six place is given to the Communist Party at 3%, and the Green EELV party, with the sovereignist Debout la France party, which was allied to the front national in the presidential elections, at 1%.
8.05pm: An estimation by Ipsos/Sopra Steria, published just after the last polling booths closed in major towns and cities at 8pm, give Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche (REM) party and its centre right MoDem party allies a landslide victory with an outright majority of between 390 and 430 of parliament’s 577 seats.
7.50pm: To win a constituency outright in the first round vote, a candidate must garner more than 50% of votes cast by registered voters (see “How it works” election guide below). But when none reach that share of the vote, it is all those with above 12.5% who go on for the showdown next Sunday in the second round. The abstention rate today means that in effect the minimum number of votes cast for a candidate in order to qualify for the second round in a constituency where one in two voters only turned out is 25%, according to an Ipsos/Sopra Steria estimation for France Télévisions and Radio France.
7.30pm: Estimations by polling institutions suggest the turnout on Sunday was 50.2%, the lowest of any legislative election first round since the creation of the fifth Republic in 1958, and almost 8% less than than that in 2012.
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A brief guide to the election
How it works:
The legislative elections are held over two rounds, one week apart, on June 11th and 18th, when France’s 47 million-strong electorate will choose the 577 members of parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly.
The minimum number of seats a party must win for an absolute majority is therefore 289.
The National Assembly is the key lawmaking chamber. Members of the less powerful upper house, the Senate, are chosen in separate elections, in which only local elected officials take part.
In those constituencies where no-one in the first round garners more than 50% of the vote on June 11th, all candidates who receive more than 12.5% of the vote will then move on for a first-past-the-post contest in the second round.
A total of just under 7,900 candidates are fighting for the National Assembly seats in both mainland France and its overseas départements (counties). There are 11 Members of Parliament who represent French nationals living abroad.
What’s at stake:
These elections are quite unusual for several reasons, beginning with the emergence of Emmanual Macron, a 39-year-old maverick centrist, relatively new to political life, who took the French presidency barely a year after announcing the launch of his new political movement En Marche ! (On the move), now renamed La République En Marche (REM). That party is standing in general elections for the first time, in an alliance with the relatively small centre-right MoDem party, and it must secure a majority for Macron to be able to be certain of pushing through the ‘structural reforms’ that were part of his presidential election campaign programme, beginning with a shakeup and loosening of France’s labour laws.
Opinion polls give Macron’s REM a resounding lead, and traditionally it is the party of the newly-elected president which wins the ensuing legislative elections. Macron has undoubtedly won over support from many in the centre-left and centre-right who will be tempted to allow him a working majority in parliament. But just as importantly, the predicted high abstention rate suggests that the unpopularity of the traditional parties, racked by corruption scandals and, in the case of the socialists, a disastrous record in government, will see Macron’s party gain a majority from a minority of the electorate.
For the traditional parties of the Left and Right now face a severe test for survival after the surge of support for Macron. A number of party officials on both sides have jumped ship for the new president, not least Edouard Philippe, the prime minister Macron appointed for his caretaker government following his election in May. Philippe was formerly with the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, which just six months ago was tipped to win both the presidential and legislative elections, buy which now faces a probable haemorrage of its electorate towards Macron’s LEM. The conservatives must at least win a sizeable minority in parliament to avoid Macron taking over leadership of the centre-right.
The Socialist Party (PS), reeling from the defeat of its candidate in the presidential elections, and bitter divisions between its leftwing and rightwing – a number of who have joined Macron – is up against a more severe debacle. After ruling five years until Macron’s election, it could implode if, as opinion polls predict, it is crushed in the elections with less than 10% of the vote. The radical-left La France Insoumise (France unbowed) party, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is tipped to become the major movement representing the Left, which would be a historic humiliation for the PS.
Meanwhile, the fate of the far-right Front National party, which has over recent years gathered an increasing share of the vote in local elections, is uncertain. With its leadership divided over its policies following its poor presidential election campaign, after which it has lost its buoyant momentum, is likely to struggle in mobilizing supporters and unlikely to gain many, if any, seats on top of the two it held in the outgoing parliament.