France election: voters deliver a win for the left, a blow for Le Pen and a hung parliament
- Shock poll shows French leftists win the most seats, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance is second and the far-right comes third
France faced potential political deadlock after elections on Sunday threw up a hung parliament, with a leftist alliance unexpectedly taking the top spot ahead of the far-right but no group winning a majority.
Voters delivered a major setback for Marine Le Pen’s nationalist, Eurosceptic National Rally (RN), which opinion polls had predicted would win the second-round ballot but ended up in the third spot, according to pollsters’ projections.
He ended up with a hugely fragmented parliament, in what is set to weaken France’s role in the European Union and elsewhere abroad and make it hard for anyone to push through a domestic agenda.
The election will leave parliament divided in three big groups – the left, centrists, and the far-right, with hugely different platforms and no tradition at all of working together.
What comes next is uncertain.