France's far-right National Rally seen winning 37% of vote in first election round

FILE PHOTO: French far right leader Marine Le Pen, Eric Ciotti, contested leader of French conservative party Les Republicains (The Republicans - LR), and Sebastien Chenu, vice-president of the French far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National - RN) party are surrounded by journalist before a press conference by Jordan Bardella, President of the Rassemblement National party, to present policy priorities as part of the campaign for the upcoming French parliamentary elections, in Paris, France, June 24, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo

PARIS (Reuters) -An opinion poll published in the newspaper Les Echos on Friday showed that French far-right party National Rally (RN) might win as much as 37% of the popular vote, two days before the first voting round in parliamentary elections.

RN was up two percentage points from the last publication of the poll, compiled by OpinionWay a week ago, while Macron's centrist bloc, Together, was seen reaching 20% of the popular vote, down two percentage points from the previous forecast.

The New Popular Front leftwing alliance was seen reaching 28% of the vote, a level unchanged compared with a week ago.

OpinionWay made no seat projections for France's next National Assembly which could differ significantly from the measured popular vote due to the two-round majority voting system.

BFM TV, in a different poll compiled by Elabe, said RN could potentially cross the 289-seat mark for an absolute majority, placing the party and its allies in the range of 260-295 seats.

The risk premium on French government bonds rose to its widest since the 2012 eurozone crisis ahead of the first round of voting in France, as traders also kept a wary eye on U.S. inflation.

On the stock market, France's CAC-40 was the only major European blue chip in the red, losing 0.48% at 09:05 GMT, compared with a gain of 0.25% for the FTSEurofirst 300.

The final outcome will be known after a second round of voting on July 7 and is hard to predict at the current stage as it will largely depend on to what extent RN's rivals will team up and withdraw own runoff candidates to block the far right.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday accused RN leader Jordan Bardella of tolerating racist speech in the ranks of his far-right camp amid a heated last television debate before the vote - an accusation Bardella rejected.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Anil D'Silva)