On Sunday voters in France headed to the polls to cast their ballots in the first round of the high-stakes snap parliamentary elections.
Notably, the polling stations across mainland France will open at 8:00 am (local time) and close 12 hours later. The polls will be closed earlier in small towns and later in the bigger cities.
Projections which predict the result with a degree of accuracy, will be released. However, France’s electoral system would make it difficult to predict the distribution of seats that each party might secure in the 577-seat National Assembly, parliament’s lower house.
Voters in France’s overseas territories which span across the world cast their ballots earlier in the weekend. The final results will not be known until the end of voting on July 7.
Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron stunned the country when he called for a snap poll after his centrist alliance lost against Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) in the European elections.
Le Pen’s eurosceptic, anti-immigrant party has been operating on the sidelines for years but now has a good chance of winning. In this election three major political blocs are competing in this election – Le Pen’s RN, Macron’s centrist alliance, and the New Popular Front coalition that includes centre-left, greens and hard-left parties.
Opinion polls show that RN can win an absolute majority or at least 289 out of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. According to the media reports, the final opinion poll ahead of the election gave RN between 35 % and 37 % of the vote, followed by 27.5-29 % for the recently formed New Popular Front alliance and 20-21 % for Macron’s party.
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