En Marche, a party created 14 months ago by Emmanuel Macron, is on course for a clear majority in the French elections – after the collapse of the socialist party. His party looks on course to win 70pc of the seats in the National Assembly – an astonishing outcome, one of the many election results that would have been dismissed out of hand by political experts a few months before it happened. It offers further proof that ‘Macronmania’ is taking hold of the French.
The electorate returns to the polls next Sunday for the second round but it’s predicted that Macron will handsomely win the 289 seats needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, with Le Figaro projecting that En Marche will likely finish with between 400 and 440 seats. ‘The result shows the wish of the French for coherence and to give a majority to the president of the Republic,” said Christophe Castaner, the party spokesman, although he cautioned against complacency for the second round, warning that “nothing can be taken for granted’.
Marine Le Pen’s Front National has done badly with just 13pc of the vote, meaning the party is likely to finish up in third place and win between three and ten seats in the second round – leaving them short of the 15 seats needed to form a parliamentary group in the National Assembly. There is some good news for Le Pen though, with the FN leader on course to win Hénin-Beaumont and finally take her seat in the Assembly.
Many voters stayed away from the polls, with turnout of only 50 per cent. Macron’s opponents say this helped En Marche – and are now worried about what the French President could achieve with such a thumping majority. Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party, warned of ‘a national assembly without a democratic debate’. It was a similar message from Florian Philippot the vice-president of the National Front, who said urged the party’s supporters to ‘mobilise en masse for the second round’ to avoid a Macron walkover. But they’ve got their work cut out: all signs suggest the French President will win convincingly next Sunday.
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