The French voted this Sunday to decide whether to facilitate the second term of centrist President Emmanuel Macron with a new absolute majority of deputiesat the end of several months of electoral marathon.
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Polling stations opened at 8 am and will close at 6 pm (local time), except in large cities where voting will take place until 8 pm and the results will begin to be known immediately.
(See also: France: Macron will fight for an absolute majority in the second round of the legislature)
In total, 48.7 million French people are registered on the electoral register, but abstention is very likely to exceed 50%, as happened in the first round.
At 5 pm, participation was 38.11%, according to the Ministry of the Interiora figure that drops 1.31% compared to the first round a week ago, but that rises compared to the second round of the 2017 legislative elections, when it was 35.33% at the same time.
The result of the second round of the legislative elections It is key so that Macron, re-elected on April 24 for five more years, can apply his liberal reform program, such as raising the retirement age from 62 to 65 years.
Its main rival is the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), the first left-wing front in 25 years that brings together the radical left, environmentalists, communists and socialists. Its leader is the veteran politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The left posed the elections as a “third round” of the presidential election, considering that the French voted in the ballot for the centrist to prevent his far-right rival Marine Le Pen from coming to power, and not for his ideas.
His goal is to wrest the majority away from Macron and force him to appoint Mélenchon as prime minister. Nupes seeks with this “cohabitation” to stop the president’s program and apply its own, such as raising the minimum wage to 1,500 euros net per month.
The latest polls, however, rule out that last scenario, but predict that the center alliance ¡Juntos! de Macron could lose the absolute majority in Parliament, forcing him to seek allies to carry out his reforms.
Together! it would achieve between 255 and 305 deputies, followed by Nupes (140 to 200), the right-wing party Los Republicanos and its UDI allies (50 to 80) and Le Pen’s National Group (RN, extreme right) (20 to 50). Most sit at 289.
The election day started badly for the presidential field since on the island of Guadeloupe, in the French Antilles, the Secretary of State for the Sea, Justine Benin, was defeated by a leftist candidate and will have to resign from the government.
In the overseas territories, the left obtained at least eight deputies. The abstention is announced to be decisive, especially when less than half of the voters voted in the first round of the legislative elections held last week. The trend should be confirmed this Sunday.
“I don’t expect anything at all from politicians, because I don’t trust them anymore. They’ve taken us for a ride”Marie-Olga told AFP on Saturday, when she went to vote for civic “duty” on the Caribbean island of Martinique.
‘Solid majority’
Sunday’s vote closes a crucial election cycle for France’s direction over the next five years.
The next electoral appointment will be the elections to the European Parliament in 2024, two years in which the parties will be able to settle the ongoing recomposition.
The irruption of the centrist Macron in 2017 shook the French political board, which is now divided into three main blocs -radical left, center and extreme right-, leaving aside the traditional government parties.
After the debacle in the presidential election, the Socialist Party (PS) decided to join the front led by Mélenchon, despite the discontent of its former leaders, and the Republicans, weakened, hope to be key to weaving majorities with Macron in Parliament.
Le Pen’s far-right party has already advanced, however, its desire to make a firm opposition to the president and, for this, it could manage to form its own parliamentary group for the first time since 1986, according to the polls, thus gaining weight.
Although negotiation is common in most democracies in the absence of a stable majority in Parliament, the adoption of laws would become a headache for the ruling party in France, accustomed to pulling out the steamroller.
In the final stretch of the campaign, Macron’s alliance warned of the chaos that would entail having to govern with a simple majority and, above all, of the “danger” that the arrival of the leftist front to power would entail.
On his return from a trip to Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron called for a “truly European France”, after accusing his Nupes opponents of wanting to leave the European Union (EU) –something they deny–, and called for a “majority solid”.
The French must vote for the candidate of their constituency -577 in total-, in a two-round uninominal system that makes projections difficult. In the first round, a deputy from Together! and 4 of the Nupes already achieved their seats.
For members of the French government who are running for a seat, including Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, the elections represent a double challenge, because they will have to resign if they lose, according to an unwritten rule.
AFP
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