In France, the far-right is way ahead in polls before high-stakes elections
- Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party is leading all polls ahead of the two-round elections, June 30 and July 7
France’s political future was up in the air on Thursday with the far-right surging in polls but other forces fighting to the end three days before a high-stakes parliamentary vote.
Depending on the result, President Emmanuel Macron could be left in a tense “cohabitation” with a prime minister from an opposing party, or with a chamber unable to produce a stable majority for at least a year to govern the EU’s second economy and top military power.
Surveys suggest voters will hand the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen over 35 per cent in the first round on Sunday, with a left alliance trailing on up to 29 and Macron’s centrists in the dust at around 20 per cent.
When he called the snap poll after a June 9 European election drubbing by the RN, Macron had hoped to present voters with a stark choice about whether to hand France to the far-right.
But the lightning three-week campaign “wasn’t going to turn around the major trends,” Brice Teinturier, deputy director of pollster Ipsos, told Le Monde daily, adding that the “RN bloc is incredibly powerful”.