Live: Macron’s centrist party wins majority of seats in French legislative elections

French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party LREM and its allies are on track to win an absolute majority in parliament, estimates showed Sunday. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, has won a seat in parliament for the first time.

    According to an Ipsos poll, Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party is expected to take 355 of 577 seats in the lower-house National Assembly, securing an absolute majority.

    The conservatives are expected to win 125 seats, the former ruling Socialist Party 49 seats, the far-left 30 seats and the far-right eight seats in a new-look legislature.
    Socialist Party leader Jean-Claude Cambadélis announced on Sunday he would retire from the post, after losing to his LREM rival in the first round of voting.
    Voter turnout at 5pm Paris time was very low at only 35.33 percent, down from 46.42 percent at the same time in the 2012 election and 40.75 percent in the first round of voting on June 11.
    Final polls closed in major cities at 8pm Paris time (6pm GMT).

The prime minister also hailed the diversity of the new National Assembly as an “opportunity for France”. Presumably he was referring to the diverse backgrounds of newly elected MPs, many of them political novices, and not their political stripes, given that most will be supporting Macron.

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France 24 en

2 minutes ago

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has said French voters have "in their vast majority preferred hope to anger, optimism to pessimsim, confidence to withdrawal".

"A year ago, no one would have imagined political renewal like this. We owe it to the drive of the president of the republic to give new life to democracy. We owe it, too, to the French people, who wanted to give the national representation a new face," PM Philippe said.

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France 24 en

4 minutes ago

"Voters have chosen hope over anger", says Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

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France 24 en

9 minutes ago

With Mélenchon and Le Pen's elections to the National Assembly, two major populist ex-presidential candidates will have seats in the next legislature, a bully pulpit extraordinaire.

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France 24 en

12 minutes ago

Far-left leader Mélenchon tweeting that he has been elected in Marseille.

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France 24 en

16 minutes ago

We don't know whether he's won his seat yet, but far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has already declared that the record abstention means Macron has "no legitimacy to destroy France's labour laws"

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France 24 en

19 minutes ago

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France 24 en

22 minutes ago

CORRECTION: National Front incumbent Gilbert Collard has very narrowly won his seat in the Gard over LREM's ex-bullfighter Marie Sara. Interior Ministry figures show Collard with 50.16 percent of the vote, 123 votes (out of nearly 43,000 cast!) ahead of the newcomer Sara.