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).
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Monday update:
Many questions remain at the end of the first round of France’s legislative elections, but what clearly emerges is that the broad leftwing alliance, the NUPES, has at the least become France’s principal opposition movement, and that Emmanuel Macron’s parliamentary centre-right coalition Ensemble is under threat of losing its majority in the National Assembly.
In almost every constituency, the final result of the makeup of the new parliament, elected for a five-year term, will only be known after next Sunday’s second-round playoff.
The interior ministry’s official final count this Monday put the NUPES and Ensemble on an equal footing at each just short of 26% of votes cast. The ministry gave the final vote share as 25.75% for Ensemble, a fraction ahead of NUPES on 25.66%, a difference of just 21,000 votes (and this figure is disputed by NUPES who claim the ministry deliberately chose not to include some of its allies' votes in the final figure, to ensure Macron's coalition came top).
But under the first-past-the-post system of the elections, estimations, which take into account the electorate's transfer of votes in constituencies where their preferred candidate lost the race on Sunday, are that Macron’s coalition would, after the second round, obtain between 255 and 295 seats out of the Parliament’s total of 577. the NUPES is in line to obtain between 150-190 seats. To secure a majority, 289 seats are required.
The estimations, which could be undone if turnout inext Sunday is significantly greater than the record low of the first round, are also that the conservative Les Républicains party-led alliance that includes traditional centre-right parties can reasonably eye a total of between 50 and 80 seats (a loss compared to its score in 2017, but not as bad as it feared). The far-right RN party of Marine Le Pen can hope for between 20 and 45 seats (a significant gain on the eight seats it had in the outgoing Parliament).
All of which bodes ill for President Emmanuel Macron, who counts on an absolute majority to see through his planned reforms, notably to raise the retirement age and to re-model the welfare system. This is because even if his party and its allies succeed, as appears likely, in forming the largest single parliamentary group - or even an absolute majority - these numbers may dwindle over time as they did in the previous Parliament, when dissidents left his camp. With the now predicted increase in numbers of the opposition on all sides, it may well block his reform plans and force him into compromises.
But yet other questions remain. Will the eclectic NUPES coalition hold together, given the policy differences of the parties that it includes, and the potentially conflictual dominance of its radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon?
The immediate future, at least, will be clear on the night of the second-round vote on June 19th, when we will be back with live coverage. Until then, thanks for following us.
11.45pm: We're taking a pause in our coverage here, but will be back with a late roundup at about 1.15am.
11.40pm: Two more MPs were elected as of today’s first round, both from the radical-left LFI party which is the leading partner of the NUPES coalition. They are Danièle Obono, who was standing in a Paris constituency, and Alexis Corbière, standing in a constituency in the north Paris suburbs.
11.10pm: More from the triumphant speech by radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon earlier this evening. “For the first time under the Fifth Republic [the political constitution introduced in 1958], a newly elected president has not managed to gather a majority in the legislative election that follows,” he said. He called on “our people, given this result, and the extraordinary opportunity that it presents, for our personal lives and for the destiny of the common country” to turn out in mass for the second round next Sunday.
11pm: In their exit poll surveys, Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimate that among the 18-24 age group who cast their votes today, 42% voted for the leftwing NUPES alliance, well ahead of the 18% who voted for the far-right Rassemblement National and the 13% who voted for Macron’s Ensemble alliance. Among the 25-34 age group, Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimate 38% voted for the NUPES.
10.30pm: It now appears that that comment (see immediately below) by Clément Beaune was not so surprising. The centre-right alliance Ensemble led by Macron’s party (which in May announced it was being renamed Renaissance from the former La République en Marche) has now publicly announced that its advice to its supporters in constituencies where the second round amounts a duel between the Left and far-right will be considered on a “case by case” basis, meaning that it could recommend in those cases voting for the leftwing candidate.
“It’s a republican front against extremes,” added a party spokesperson in a statement to news agency AFP, adding: “Some NUPES candidates are extremists. It [voting advice] will be according to the personality of the NUPES [candidate], notably if it is someone who carries the values of the republic […] But we will support no RN candidate.”
That was also echoed by government spokeswoman Olivia Grégoire and justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.
Meanwhile, Christian Jacob, president of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, advised his electorate tonight that “No vote should go to the extremes”, and recommended voting for the candidate from Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance in cases where no LR candidate is through to the second round.
10.10pm: In an interview this evening on BFMTV, Clément Beaune, the current junior minister for European affairs, has surprisingly broken with his party’s line by calling on Macron’s electorate to vote next week for the leftwing alliance NUPES in constituencies where the choice is a duel between the Left and the far-right RN party.
10.05pm: The far-right candidate Éric Zemmour was unrepentant after his elimination in the first round in the Var in southern France (see below). “In the name of our entire movement, I want to say to the French people that the fight must go on. The fight for our children, the fight against the Islamo-Leftism of [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon and against Macron's technocratic and careerist Left,” said Zemmour, whose Reconquête! party looks unlikely to win any MPs. “Mélenchon and Macron are simply two side of the same coin,” he continued. “Macron wants to deconstruct French identity, Mélenchon wants to destroy it. Macron is taking his time, Mélenchon is in a hurry.” Zemmour ended with an implicit sideswipe at his far-right rival Marine Le Pen's party Rassemblement National: “Our political life today is 50 shades of leftism. In a political landscape which has moved completely to the Left, Reconquête! will be the only party of the Right.”
9.58pm: Pollster Ipsos-Sopra Steria's estimations have changed slightly since the first at 8pm. They now give the broad-left alliance NUPES a 25.6% share of the vote, up slightly and now in the lead over Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right alliance Ensemble which remains on 25.2%, while the estimated score of the far-right RN party is also up with 19.1% (against 18.9% earlier), and the conservatives on 13.6% (down a fraction from 13.7% earlier).
The official results will be announced on Monday morning by the interior ministry.
9.52pm: The president of the rightwing Les Républicains, Christian Jacob, sought to put on a brave face on his party's performance insisting that with it and its allies attracting around 14% of the vote and projected to win 50 to 80 seats, they had done less badly than many had forecast. “That's because our candidates have local roots, that made the difference in many constituencies and we're in a position to play a decisive role in some constituencies,” said Jacob, who was not standing for election again himself. “The far-left and far-right are the same, the middle classes are bound to get clobbered.”
The former minister outlined his party's approach to the new Parliament. “We'll vote for legislation that's going in the right direction, we will be constructive,” he declared. “We're not in favour of permanent revolution, of clobbering the middle classes. The future LR MPs will be in a position to change things,” Jacob added.
9.35pm: Just one candidate has been so far officially elected as of today’s first round (see bottom of page ‘How the elections work’), or rather Yannick Favennec has been re-elected in his constituency in the north-west Mayenne département. Centre-right Favennec is a member of the Horizons party created by Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister Édouard Philippe.
At this hour, no member of the government has been eliminated from the two-round elections. Emmanuel Macron has made clear that any minister who does not win the constituency they are standing in will have to step down from government.
9.25pm: Another high-profile casualty of the first round is the far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour, the failed presidential candidate who was standing for Parliament in a seat in the Var département in the south for his new party Reconquête!. Zemmour was eliminated in the first round behind the Ensemble candidate Sereine Mauborgne and the Rassemblement National candidate Philippe Lottiaux. Reports suggest that Lottiaux beat Zemmour by just 801 votes. Reconquête is projected to have received around 4% of the popular vote and looks unlikely to win any seats.
9.20pm: More from tonight's speech by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne: “We are the only political force that is in a position to obtain a majority in the [National] Assembly. We have a week before us, one week to convince, one week to obtain a strong and clear majority.”
She warned against what she said was the danger of “political instability” and the “threat against the values of liberty, of equality, of fraternity [editor’s note, a reference to the French republic’s historic, official motto] and of secularity”, adding: “This first round shows that these values are still in danger.”
9.15pm: The rightwing Les Républicains (LR), once the major electoral force on the Right, have showed that they are still a force to be reckoned with in Parliamentary elections, even if they are much diminished from the days of presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. The polls estimate they have received between 13% and 14% of the popular vote, enough to win them perhaps 50 to 80 seats next Sunday. If so, that would be well ahead of the far-right RN party, even though the latter has a bigger share of the popular vote. “LR are not dead,” said Sarkozy's former justice minister Rachida Dati on the TFI television channel. She could not resist a wipe at the Left, either. “ Jean-Luc Mélenchon has failed in his gamble because his score this evening is less than it was in the presidential election. All the socialists are hiding away this evening,” said Dati.
9.10pm: Newly appointed prime minister Élisabeth Borne , who came in first place in the Normandy constituency where she was standing, sending her into next weekend’s second round, tonight said that “In face of extremes we will give up nothing”, in a clear reference to the far-right and the radical-left led coalition of the broad Left. “Social progress is not economic de-growth but rather the freedom to innovate to create jobs […] National sovereignty is not a rupture with Europe […] and an alignment with Russia. The [French] republic, is not the placing into question of our institutions and the insulting of our forces of law and order.”
That last comment was a shot at Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who recently caused controversy after he sharply criticised the police for regular violent incidents following the death earlier this month of a young women who was shot by officers during an arrest in Paris.
9.02pm: More from that brief Marine Le Pen speech. She referred to the fact that the RN's share of the vote had gone up by seven percentage points since the last Parliamentary elections in 2017, and was now around 19%, even though the party is only projected to win between 20 and 45 seats in next Sunday's decisive round. She described the electoral system as being “on its last legs”.
9pm: Pollsters Ipsos-Sopra Steria report that their exit poll survey found that the major issues of concern for voters they questioned were the erosion of purchasing power (53%), the future of the overstretched national health system (36%) and environmental concerns (29%).
8.55pm: A symbolic result just in: Macron’s high-profile former education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who was standing for the first time in a constituency in the Loiret département (county) south of Paris, has been eliminated from the second-round vote.
8.52pm: Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National presidential candidate who has been widely-criticised for overseeing a lacklustre campaign by the far-right party in these Parliamentary elections, was in more upbeat tone as she greeted the projected election results. She spoke from her constituency in the Pas-de-Calais département or county in northern France where she picked up 55% of the votes in the first round but was not elected in the first round as fewer than 25% of the total number of registered voters turned out. Le Pen said that having received around 19% of the popular vote nationally today, there was potential for the party to “send many MPs to the [National] Assembly” next Sunday.
She declared: “It is important not to vote for Emmanuel Macron next Sunday. If you do nothing, we risk entering a tunnel which has no light at the end for the next five years. With dozens of Rassemblement National MPs you can be sure that you will be represented.”
Le Pen then echoed the comments of her young colleague Jordan Bardella by adding: “In the constituencies where there is a duel between La République en Marche [editor's note, Macron's coalition Ensemble] and NUPES, I call on voters not to choose between those who deconstruct from above and those who take apart from below, neither those who want to deprive you of your rights nor those who want to deprive you of your property.”
8.40pm: “At the end of this first round, the NUPES has come in in first place,” said radical-left leader and figurehead of the broad-left alliance, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “It will be present in more than 500 constituencies in the second round. And from that point, the projections at this hour of [numbers of] seats have no sense other than to maintain illusions […] The truth is that the presidential party, at the end of the first round, is beaten and defeated.”
8.35pm: The initial Ipsos-Sopra Steria projections of numbers of seats estimates that Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right coalition between 255 and 295, while an absolute majority is 289 seats.
8.25pm: Jordan Bardella, the youthful interim president of Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, said the projected first-round results were a “wakeup call” for voters ahead of next Sunday's decisive second round, saying that nothing should be take for granted. He also attacked both the leftwing alliance NUPES and the ruling Ensemble! coalition. “You will not get an opposition by voting for NUPES,” he said in a declaration to voters. “In a second round vote between those who seek to take things apart from below [editor's note, the radical left] and those who deconstruct from above [editor's note, Ensemble!], I will leave my voting slip blank. If you want to oppose Emmanuel Macron, vote for the RN next Sunday.”
8.10pm: The turnout rate is estimated to be 47.2%, a record low. In the last legislative elections in 2017, it was 48.7% which was at the time a record low.
8pm: First exit poll estimations give the NUPES leftwing alliance a 25.2% share of votes cast and exactly the same for Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right alliance Ensemble. The Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll for public broadcasters France Télévisions and Radio France finds the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party in third place with 18.9% of votes, followed by 13.7% for the conservative Les Républicains party.
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A brief guide to the elections
How they work:
The legislative elections will choose the 577 members (MPs) of the French Parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, for a five-year term which runs in parallel with the five-year term of the president, Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected in April.
In mainland France, polling stations open at 8am and close at 6pm in rural constituencies, and at 8pm in cities and large towns.
The elections are held over two rounds, on June 12th and 19th. 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 more than 12.5% of votes cast in the first round.
There are 47.8 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 of 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:
For the recently re-elected Emmanuel Macron, it is crucial that his ‘Ensemble’ centre-right electoral coalition, dominated by his Renaissance party (the re-named former LREM), wins an absolute majority in order to push through his planned reforms, notably raising the retirement age and re-modelling the welfare system.
He enjoyed a thumping majority in parliament over his first term in office between 2017-2022. But the context has changed; no longer a fresh face, and trailing an image of arrogance, he won his new term in a playoff against the far-right’s Marine Le Pen after many of the votes he garnered were cast to defeat Le Pen. Those who felt their vote was hijacked by that duel, notably those on the Left, now have a second chance to change the shape of government.
In the two months since the presidential elections, the fractured Left has come together in a coalition, NUPES – for New Popular Ecological and Social Union – , with which to fight the legislative poll. Led by the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it includes the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Green EELV party. In every constituency, just one common candidate for the NUPES is standing, thus avoiding a splitting of the broad Left vote. Latest opinion surveys of voting intentions show the NUPES to be neck-and-neck with Macron’s centre-right coalition. There is every probability that the Left will make significant gains in Parliament, perhaps even becoming the main opposition group, although it is unlikely to reach a majority.
Meanwhile, the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, whose support collapsed in the presidential elections (as also did support for the socialists and the Greens) will be hoping at best not to lose many of the 112 seats it won in 2017, its electorate increasingly drawn to Macron’s party and the far-right. For the LR, once a ruling party, the result of the legislative elections will be crucial to its survival, and another poor score is likely to see it implode.
Finally, the far-right in the shape of the Rassemblement National (the former Front National) is hoping to make gains on the eight MPs it had in the last Parliament, but the first-past-the-post system of the legislative elections make it unlikely to achieve more than 20 seats. In the far-right wings lies the Reconquête party of maverick polemicist Eric Zemmour, which is fighting its first parliamentary election, when it faces a key test of its political legitimacy in face of its rival, the Rassemblement National.