France's far-right makes gains in southeast, fails to make a breakthrough in Paris

French voters do face a decisive choice on July 7th in that runoff that could see the country's first far right government since the World War Two Nazi occupation or perhaps no majority emerging at all. We're going to talk more about this with Shirley Sitbon, who joins me now live from the National Assembly. Surely the different parties have about 24 hours to decide on their strategies for this second round. Do you think the left and the center can really block the wave of far right MPs that's expected? They can try. Nothing is impossible. On paper it is possible, but the far right will have its wave of MP's coming in anyway. The question is whether it will be an absolute majority or not. And the left and center want to block an absolute majority. That's their goal. So as you know, as we've said, the French legislative elections are not proportional. They're all different elections and 577 areas. And so as we come into the second round of voting, in many areas you'll have three candidates, one candidate for the national rally, one candidate for the left, perhaps one for the center. And the idea of the left and the center is to form a sort of alliance or a common front. They don't have a common program, common positions, but they want to block the arrival of the national rally. So the idea is to drop out one of the candidates in every area in every election. And that way they hope to block the arrival of various national rights MPs into Parliament. Now, The thing is they don't all agree, as we've heard. And also when centrists, for example, do drop out of the race, it doesn't mean their voters will vote for parties they don't necessarily back. So that's a whole question. And at the same time, well, the far right is having its own negotiations, its own strategy, and it started talks with some people on the central right hoping to get them in, to attract them because now that they may have a government, well, that will be a whole different deal. And some people may be tempted. The center right to join the far right, that's what the far right is hoping for. All right, Shirley, thanks for that. That's really simple on their reporting from the National Assembly in Paris.