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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- That ends our live election coverage for tonight. In the meantime, for the latest results please consult the interactive map below. And don't forget to look out for our reports and analysis throughout the week in the run-up to next Sunday's crucial second-round vote.
12.01am: Below is Mediapart's interactive map showing the results constituency-by-constituency, on mainland France and overseas, and which will be regularly updated. Please pass your cursor over the map to find details of results.
The term "En tête" refers to the lead candidate, while "Deputé.e sortant.e" refers to the sitting MP seaking re-election.
The colours marked "Divers" droite, gauche and centre refer to independent rightwing, leftwing and centrist candidates respectively. "Rassemblement national-les Républicains" refers to those candidates from the conservative Les Républicains party who are allied to the RN.
11.50pm: A measure of how well the RN have done is the fact that according to the official results the far-right party already has at least 37 MPs elected tonight in the first round, having each attracted more than 50% of the vote in their constituency. To put this into context, in the last parliamentary elections in 2022 the party won 89 seats altogether. All projections tonight put them as winning up to three times that number by the end of next Sunday's second round vote.
11.30pm: In the northern town of Le Touquet, where Emmanuel Macron has a second home and where he and his wife Brigitte voted earlier on Sunday, the far-right RN candidate is in the lead with 42.3% share of the vote, while the Macron party candidate garnered 30.66%, setting up a duel for the second round on July 7th.
10.56pm: Reacting to Gabriel Attal’s comments tonight, Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Ecologists-EELV green party which is part of the NFP leftwing alliance, said: “I am relieved by what Gabriel Attal has just said […] but I am waiting for the same clarity from all the members of the [ruling] majority. I have not heard that from François Bayrou or from Edouard Philippe.” The latter two are Macron’s centre-right allies – Bayrou is the veteran leader of the MoDem party, and Philippe, Macron’s first prime minister and mayor of the northern town of Le Havre, leads the Horizons party he co-founded since leaving government.
10.48pm: Yet another projection! Pollsters Ifop for Le Figaro newspaper give the RN 34% of the overall vote and forecasts that the far-right party will win between 240 and 270 seats next Sunday. That would mean it would be comfortably the biggest party in the Assembly but would fall short of an overall majority and thus of forming a government.
10.45pm: More from the speech by Gabriel Attal tonight: Macron and Attal’s centre-right coalition Ensemble will present a candidate in around 100 constituencies in next Sunday’s second-round voting, but any of its candidates who are tonight in third place behind the RN in order, said Attal, to support “another candidate who defends like us the values of the republic”.
“It’s an important decision to take, a heavy decision, because it’s the choice of responsibility, and the choice of honour,” he added.
Attal said he did not believe that the leftwing alliance NFP is in a position to gain an absolute majority in the National Assembly, parliament’s powerful lower house. “What’s at stake in the second round is to deprive the far-right of an absolute majority.”
10.37pm: The far-right RN's presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has been re-elected to the National Assembly. Marine Le Pen won in the first round of the vote in her constituency at Hénin-Beaumont in the north of France this evening with 58% of the vote. It appears that she will lead the RN grouping at the Assembly whatever the outcome of the national second round vote next Sunday. The RN's current president Jordan Bardella is the party's candidate to be prime minister if they form the next government. But he was elected earlier this month as a Member of the European Parliament.
10.35pm: Outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal has been speaking tonight. “We have the sincere conviction that we are leading a just , strong necessary and indispensable fight, but tonight is not a night like any others,” said the 35 year-old who was appointed by Macron in January.
“The lesson from tonight is that the far-right is at the door of power […] Our objective is clear – to prevent the RN from obtaining an absolute majority, from dominating the National Assembly, and so to govern the country with the disastrous project that is its own,” he added. “Not one vote should go to the Rassemblement National. In such circumstances, France deserves that one has no hesitation. It is our moral duty to prevent the worst from happening.”
10.25pm: Disgraced former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, who was attempting to make a political comeback in a south-west France constituency, has thrown in the towel tonight even before the end of the vote counting. “It’s dead,” he said of his campaign in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, and said he was calling on his supporters to vote for the conservative LR candidate who next Sunday will be in face of a far-right RN rival.
Cahuzac, 72, who as budget minister adopted a posture of cracking down on tax fraud, was forced to resign his post in 2013 after Mediapart revealed how he held a secret tax-evading bank account abroad. He was later tried and found guilty of tax fraud and money laundering.
10.17pm: Ex-minister Michel Barnier, a former senior figure in the conservative Les Républicains and its predecessors, has intervened to make it clear he does agree with the mainstream LR decision this evening that the party won't tell its supporters who to vote for next Sunday where it doesn't have a candidate. Barnier – who was the EU's lead Brexit negotiator – wants his old party's followers to vote against the far-right and the radical-left LFI where the latter's candidate represents the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP).
“This evening, at this serious moment in which France finds itself, it is essential that, in each constituency, Les Républicains block both LFI and the RN. It is also essential that leaders of the Right and centre express this clearly...” he said on X (formerly Twitter).
10.08pm: Former president François Hollande has been commenting the new political landscape tonight. “The president of the republic appears obliterated,” he said of his once economy minister who succeeded him in 2017. “The majority is in tatters,” he added, referring to the relative (not absolute) majority Macron’s Renaissance party had in parliament, and rhetorically asked who apart from the leftwing alliance “can represent the defence of the republic?”.
10.01pm: The prospect of a RN absolute majority at the National Assembly after next Sunday's second round seems to have reduced - slightly. Following on from pollster Elabe's earlier projection (see below), the forecast from Ipsos-Talan for France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24/RFI and LCP Assemblée nationale, gives between 230 to 280 seats to Rassemblement National and its allies. Its projection gives Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) 125 and 165 seats, while President Macron's 'Ensemble' coalition would win between 70 and 100 seats and the conservative LR and allies between 41 and 61.
Meanwhile an update from Elabe that takes into account the decision taken this evening by some groupings to withdraw their candidates in some seats to ensure the RN are beaten has changed its forecast. It now projects 255 to 295 seats for the RN, 120 to 140 for the NFP and 90 to 125 to the president's coalition. All this suggests that the most likely outcome as things stand is a hung parliament with the RN as the single biggest party, though an absolute majority certainly can't be ruled out.
9.56pm: The Parti Socialiste leader, Olivier Faure, announced this evening that he has won his seat tonight in a constituency in the Seine-et-Marne département east of Paris. His main rival was a candidate from the conservative LR party who was allied to the RN.
9.50pm: The Ipsos-Talan exit poll estimations see 8.15pm) have changed slightly: they now give the RN 33.5% (down by 0.5%), and Emmanuel Macron’s coalition Ensemble 20.7% (up 0.4%). The others remain largely the same.
9.45pm: Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel has lost his seat in north-east France, which he had held since 2017. The RN candidate garnered just more than 50%, and is therefore elected to parliament without the need for a second-round vote.
9.38pm: The latest election projections by the Elabe institute for BFMTV news channel give the far-right RN 33% of the vote and 260 to 310 seats, the leftwing alliance NFP 28.5% and 115 to 145 seats, the Macron camp – under the label 'Ensemble' – 22% and 90 to 120 seats, and the conservative LR and its allies 10.5% and 30 to 50 seats. But these forecasts are made even more uncertain by the potential number of three-way contests next Sunday, possibly up to 300 unless parties choose to withdraw their candidates where they are unlikely to win.
9.35pm: Former French socialist president François Hollande, 69, is standing as a candidate for the NFP in his political fiefdom of the town of Tulle, in the Corrèze département (county) in south-west France, which he twice previously represented as an MP and where he has twice served as mayor. Announcing, two weeks ago, his first return to active politics since leaving the Élysée Palace in 2017, he said the move, never before taken by a French president, was “because I considered the situation was grave”, adding it was “an exceptional decision for an exceptional situation”.
He has come first in today’s polling, but without a sufficient majority to avoid a play-off next Sunday. According to interior ministry figures, Hollande garnered 37.63% of votes cast, ahead of the RN candidate with 22.13% and the conservative LR candidate on 20.51%.
9.30pm: Hardline interior minister Gérald Darmanin, standing in the constituency that includes the north-east town of Tourcoing announced on X (the former Twitter) that he is ahead of other candidates, although without the required majority for an outright win today. “The RN has obtained a high score in our region,” he admitted, and called on voters to turn out next Sunday so that ”the values of the Nord [département] ultimately triumph”.
9.18pm: Macron’s centre-right coalition Ensemble issued a statement tonight calling on its candidates in constituencies where they have emerged today in third place (and where the final result will be decided in next Sunday’s second round) to withdraw “for the benefit of [other] candidates who are in a position to beat the Rassemblement National, and with who we share the essential: the values of the [French] republic”.
It should be noted that radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon's similar declaration (see 9pm) concerning his party's candidates was already adopted by the other parties within the NFP alliance.
9.15pm: One of the sub-plots of the election campaign was how it split the conservative Les Républicains. The LR president Éric Ciotti appalled the vast majority of the party and its senior figures by reaching an electoral pact with the RN's Jordan Bardella. After tonight's vote Ciotti declared that “victory was in sight”. And he made clear his frustration with the decision of the rest of the LR not to support the RN in the second round (they've just said they won't instruct their supporters who to vote for next Sunday). “Tonight, it's no longer possible to refuse to make a choice between our patriotic and republican union and the far-left,” he said from Nice on the Mediterranean coast. “I call on all Les Républicains to follow the path I have opened up; Les Républicains must contribute to the victory of the entire Right.”
9.10pm: Commenting on the results tonight, Emmanuel Macron said, “In face of the Rassemblement national, it is time for a large rally that is clearly democratic and republican for the second round”. The French president added that he interpreted the exceptional turnout as an illustration of the electorate’s desire “to clarify the political situation”.
9pm: Radical-left FFI party figurehead and leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 72, tonight announced that in every constituency where his party’s candidate came third and the far-right first “we will withdraw our candidature”. The parties within the leftwing alliance, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), have divided up constituencies between them, and therefore field candidates for their party but under the umbrella of the NFP.
“In every circumstance our instruction is clear, not one vote more for the RN,” said Mélenchon. “We are heading for a second round of exceptional intensity. The country must choose. Will it aggravate the worst of its divisions, those of social inequalities, [inequalities] of religion, skin colour, social and geographical origin, or will it come together to form just one people without any prior condition?”
8.57pm: BFM-TV news channel is reporting that there could be up to 320 three-way contests among the 577 constituencies next weekend, unless some parties decide to withdraw a poorly-placed candidate. This inevitably makes it harder to forecast the likely outcome, underlining just how much there is still a great deal to play for in the second round on Sunday.
8.55pm: The main body of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) – those who have not agreed a deal with the RN – have indicated they won't give guidance to their voters on who to vote for in those seats where they cannot win next Sunday. But LR Euro MP François-Xavier Bellamy made clear whom they saw as the main enemy. “We believe in the conscience of the French people and do not believe we can dispose of their votes,” he told TF1 television. “I believe no candidate owns the votes of the people who have trusted them,” he explained. For the LR MEP “the danger facing our country today is the far-left”. He said his party's national score of 10.1% “shows that the Right has not disappeared, contrary to what hasty observers wanted us to believe”.
8.45pm: The RN's candidate for prime minister Jordan Bardella made it clear that he saw next Sunday's vote as a straight choice between his party and the leftwing alliance the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). “[The French people] have delivered an unequivocal verdict. By putting RN candidates and their allies in the lead, the French have sparked an unprecedented hope in the country,” he said. “I call on them for one final effort. The presidential camp, still largely discredited, cannot prevail. The choice is clear and two paths lie before France. One, an alliance of the worst, which will lead to ruin; the other, a national union, which will restore security and defend work,” he claimed. The second round of the Parliamentary elections would be “one of the most decisive in the history of the Fifth Republic”, he added.
8.40pm: While Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right coalition Ensemble (together), credited by Ipsos-Talan with 20.3%, other centre-right parties are given 1.4%. Ensemble has done slightly worse than some opinion survey predictions ahead of the elections, but the estimations today are broadly in line with what the opinion polls predicted.
8.35pm: The estimated 28.1% share of votes cast today for the broad leftwing alliance, the NFP, is not the whole story for the Left. Far-left candidates who are not part of the NFP gained 1.2%, while other moderate leftwing candidates attracted 1.8% of the vote. Some of those votes could be transferred to NFP candidates in those seats where there was no outright winner today and that will be decided next Sunday.
8.25pm: Marine Le Pen, the RN's former presidential candidate, told supporters: “Democracy has spoken.” Speaking from Hénin-Beaumont in northern France, where she announced her re-election in the first round, she said the RN’s lead demonstrates that the voters “in an unambiguous vote, have shown their desire to turn the page after seven years of disdainful and corrosive power” under Emmanuel Macron.
“Nothing has been won, and the second round will be crucial to prevent the country from falling into the hands of the NUPES coalition [editor's note, in fact the NFP], a far-left with a tendency towards violence,” she warned. She said next week's second round would be “crucial to give Jordan [Bardella - the party's candidate to be prime minister] an absolute majority in the National Assembly, to begin the recovery of France next week and the restoration of national unity and concord.”
8.24pm: The polling experts disagree a little on the precise extent of the likely RN vote and forecast seats next week. That estimate by Ipsos-Talan for France Télévisions, Radio France, France24/RFI and LCP Assemblée Nationale mentioned just now puts the RN and allies on a possible 230-280 seats next week. If this turns out to be true then it would be a hung Parliament with no one group commanding an overall majority. The RN have said they will only form a government if they gain an overall majority; for which they need 289+ seats.
8.20pm: An illustration of how extraordinarily mobilized the French electorate has been in this election today is that turnout in the first round of the country’s parliamentary polls had seen a steady decline over seven elections since 1993, falling from 69.2% that year to 47.51% in 2022.
8.15pm: According to exit poll results from Ipsos-Talan for French public broadcasters France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24, RFI and LCP, the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front), the broad leftwing alliance principally composed of the Parti Socialiste (PS), the communist party (PCF), the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party, and Les Ecologistes (the former EELV), is in line to gain between 125-165 seats in parliament after the end of voting next Sunday.
That forecast, based on an estimation that the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) today garnered 28.1% of votes cast, needs to be treated with great caution, because of the large number of seats that will be the subject of negotiations between parties (see below) and only determined in next Sunday’s second and final round.
But if correct, the forecast would suggest that the leftwing coalition would reach around the same number of seats in the National Assembly as it had, under the name of the NUPES, when parliament was dissolved.
According to Ipsos-Talan, the radical-left LFI party will have lost its previous number of seats, while the socialists and Greens will have gained more than they had in the last parliament.
8.01pm: The initial projections for today's first-round vote are in and they are dramatic and historic: the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party is forecast to have picked up around 34% of the overall vote and are being predicted to win - possibly - up to 300 seats. If so that would be enough to give them an overall majority and mean they can form the next French government; the threshold is 289 seats. That would be the first far-right government in France since 1945. However, the projections also show that the RN may fall short of that target of 289 seats.
Meanwhile the leftwing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) is projected to win 28.5% of the vote and gain up to 160 seats. President Emmanuel Macron's centre-right party and allies are on around 21% of the vote and may get up to around 100 seats. If these projections are accurate – and it is hard to know for sure how second round voting will go - then it marks the end of the Macron era, with the far-right and the Left now the two dominant blocs in the National Assembly. The president's gamble in dissolving the National Assembly on June 9th looks to have backfired spectacularly. But still a lot to play for in next week's second round.
6.50pm: One reason the turnout matters so much is that the more people who vote, the greater the chance of more candidates reaching the required threshold to go through to the second round. This threshold is gaining the backing of at least 12.5% of registered voters. This would then mean many more three-way contests next Sunday, further complicating the electoral landscape. In such cases what is crucial is whether the lowest-placed candidate stays in the race and continues to split the vote – or whether they pull out and 'lend' their votes to one of the remaining two candidates.
5.10pm: The voter participation figures have come in for 5pm and they show that 59.39% of people have so far voted, which is a whole 20 points more than 2022 (39.42%). This makes it the biggest first-round turnout by this time of day since 1978. There are also estimates that the final turnout rate by 8pm could be between 67% and 69%; again, this is 20 points or so more than that seen in 2022.
3.20pm: A reminder that the first indications of how this first-round vote has gone will come at 8pm CET with projections released by polling firms based on exit polls.
3pm: The early indications are that turnout in this crunch election is going to be high. By midday the authorities said that 25.9% of those registered had voted, compared with just 18.4% at the last such elections in 2022. This makes it the highest midday voting figure since the parliamentary elections of 1981 – the year that socialist François Mitterrand also became president in France after many years of conservative rule.
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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 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 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:
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, the centre-right presidential majority has sunk into depression, and the far-right has calmly advanced towards its goal: the office of prime minister.
Read more of this political analysis here.