FAR-RIGHT’S STRONG RESULTS IN FRENCH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS Marine Le Pen’s RN winning about 34 percent of the vote

France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has won a resounding victory in the first round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections.

Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe showed Marine Le Pen’s RN winning about 34 percent of the vote. The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition looked set to seal about 29 percent, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance about 20.5 percent.

The result puts RN in a position where it may start thinking hopefully about forming a government. However, forces across the rest of the political spectrum have suggested that they will cooperate to block the far-right party in the second round vote on July 7.

Macron stunned the country by calling the snap election after the RN surged in European Parliament elections last month, gambling that the anti-immigration party with historical links to anti-Semitism would not repeat that success at the national level.

At party leader Le Pen’s Henin-Beaumont constituency in northern France, supporters waved French flags and sang La Marseillaise, the national anthem.