French election: Far-right RN projected to win first spherical

Polling stations on the mainland are due to close by 8 p.m. local time (1800 UTC) on Sunday.

Immediately after polling ends, French media outlets will publish their projections from the first round of the legislative election, which normally have a high degree of accuracy.

Early official results are expected later on Sunday night.

The office of French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said that he would make a statement about the outcome of the first round on Sunday evening.

Under election rules in France, any lawmaker who receives more than half of the votes cast in their district wins a seat in the National Assembly outright in the first round. But this must also correspond to at least a quarter of the registered voters in the constituency.

In practice, very few candidates will manage this feat in round one, so it may be difficult to draw any conclusions from Sunday’s results.

After the first round, several candidates in each district are then expected to drop out of the race to help other more popular contenders in the runoff and block victories by far-right candidates.

The runoff next Sunday, July 7, will be where most seats will be allocated. After those results are in, President Emmanuel Macron should then, in theory, choose the country’s next prime minister from the strongest party in the Assembly.

If, as is expected, either the leftist coalition or the far-right RN takes the most seats, Macron would be forced into a period of cohabitation, which would see his power limited to foreign policy, the military and EU affairs.