It says much about the extraordinary rise of Emmanuel Macron that some commentators are describing the outcome of Sunday’s second round of voting in the parliamentary elections as something of a disappointment for the new president.
His La République en Marche [LREM] party won an estimated 359 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, some way short of predictions last week that forecast his fledging party could finish with as many as 450. Then again, it’s the biggest majority in the Assembly since the 1968 elections and the result also confirms the destruction of the Socialist party and the disarray of the Republicians.
The former picked up only 46 seats – down from 295 in the 2012 elections – while the centre-right party and their coalition partners finished with 126. While that number is better than predicted – some polls had suggested they would struggle to hit three figures – it is still 99 fewer seats than the Republicains managed five years ago.
Elsewhere, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left party, Unsubmissive France, won 26 seats, and the National Front will have eight MPs, including Marine Le Pen.
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