France's high-stakes legislative elections propelled the far-right National Rally to a strong but not decisive lead in the first-round vote Sunday, polling agencies projected. At this rate, President Emmanuel Macron's grouping of centrist parties could finish a distant third in the first-round ballot, the AP reports. That alliance was showing behind both Marine Le Pen's National Rally and a new left-wing coalition of parties that joined forces to keep her anti-immigration party with historical links to antisemitism from being able to form the first far-right government in France since World War II.
But with another week of campaigning to come before the decisive final voting next Sunday, the election's ultimate outcome remained uncertain. Macron urged voters to rally against the far right in the next round, while Le Pen called for her party to be given an "absolute majority" at parliament. The projections suggest the National Rally stands a good chance of winning a majority in the lower house of parliament for the first time, with an estimated one-third of the first-round vote, nearly double its 18% in the first round in 2022. With or without a majority, the New York Times points out, the National Rally appears headed toward being the biggest force in the lower house.
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