French far-right falls short of majority in first referendum
PARIS (EFE) – The far-right National Rally (RN) will fall short of an absolute majority in the second round of France’s elections on Sunday, with the first polls released predicting it will win between 190 and 200 seats following a massive withdrawal of candidates from other parties.
According to a Harris Interactive poll released this Wednesday, the RN will remain in the lead but will fall short of the 289 delegates needed for an absolute majority.
The New Popular Front (NFP) would receive 159-183 delegates, while the Macronist bloc would receive 110-136 and the conservative Los Republicans would receive 30 to 50 delegates.
The poll, conducted for the M6 channel and RTL radio, said other parties and candidates (regionalists, various independents) would have between 17 and 31 representatives.
218 candidates resigned
This is the first demographic study of voting intention published after the deadline to submit candidates for the second round expired on Tuesday afternoon.
At the end of that period, 218 candidates resigned, almost all of them left-wing or Macronist, abandoning the electoral race in favour of another candidate taking the seat against a far-right rival.
New voting intention surveys to be released in the next two days and their projections on seat distribution may or may not confirm RN’s decline in the face of its rivals’ strategies.
Le Pen is “very confident” of winning an absolute majority
Le Pen assured that she is “very confident” of obtaining an absolute majority in the second round of the legislative elections next Sunday.
“I am very confident. The French have shown that they want change,” Le Pen said in a statement to the TF1 channel this Wednesday.
He assured that he is not worried about the coalition that has begun to be woven between other parties, and that has begun to manifest itself in the resignation of more than 200 candidates, to avoid the scattering of votes and help the election of deputies to other parties besides the far-right National Group (RN).
“The French are tired of not being treated as responsible adults who know what’s good for the country,” he said, referring to the various parties’ slogans to vote for each other.
In any case, he stressed that his party, along with some allies from the conservative LR, “is the only party capable of getting an absolute majority” that could give “France a perspective of development”.
And he warned that his party would not govern if it did not win an absolute majority.