Far-right National Rally leads first round of voting in French election, exit polls show

Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (NR) party has topped the polls in the first round of voting in France’s snap parliamentary election.

The New Popular Front, is tipped to come second place, with 28.1 percent, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble trailed at 20.3 percent.

The conservative Les Républicains party received 10.2 per cent of the vote.

After the vote French president called for voters to rally behind “Republican and Democratic” candidates in the second round of the elections which will be held next Sunday.

Ms Le Pen said after the results were announced that she is hoping her party will have an “absolute majority” in parliament.

She said that she hopes to have things in place so that her protege Jordan Bardella, 28, would become prime minister of France.

NR’s share of the vote is nearly double the 18% they received in the first round of voting in France’s 2022 election..

The snap parliamentary election was called after President Macron’s Ensemble alliance was beaten by Le Pen’s party at the European elections earlier this month.

Her eurosceptic party is now closer to power than ever, having completed a period of “detoxification” that has seen it enter the political mainstream.

Voter turnout was the highest in 40 years in France. By midday, turnout was at 25.9 per cent, compared with 18.43 per cent two years ago – the highest comparable turnout figures since the 1981 legislative vote, Ipsos France’s research director Mathieu Gallard said.

The complicated two-stage system can make it hard to know how seats in the 577-seat National Assembly will be distributed. Only candidates who win more than 12.5 per cent of the vote will go through to the next round, taking place next week on 7 July.

Ahead of the vote, Le Pen predicted her party would “win an absolute majority” and Mr Bardella would become prime minister.

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In Hénin-Beaumont, a town in Le Pen’s constituency in northern France where she may be re-elected in the first round, 67-year-old Denis Ledieu said people were suffering due to the long-term deindustrialisaton of the region.

“So if the (RN) promises them things, then why not? They want to try it out, I think,” he said.

In Garches, a small town near Paris, a woman screamed “It’s shameful, it’s shameful” as Mr Bardella arrived to cast his vote.

“They even invited the leftists,” he said.

Elsewhere, voters such as 51-year-old Mylène Diop said she had voted for the New Popular Front, a hastily assembled left-wing coalition polling in second.

She said it was “the most important election” of her life. “The RN is at the gates of power and you see the aggressiveness of people and the racist speech that has been unleashed,” she said.

• With agencies