According to projections from Sunday night, candidates from the centrist’s En Marche party took a huge advantage in Sunday’s first-round elections despite relatively low turnout. Ipsos says that after the second-round runoff elections—which are held next Sunday—En Marche should ultimately take between 390 and 430 seats in the 577-member house, which would give the party the largest National Assembly majority in the history of the Fifth Republic.
For the first time in 50 years, more than half of French voters abstained. Between the low turnout and the strong performance of Macron’s party—whose candidates took about a third of the vote—only three candidates hit the threshold to be elected after the first round. (In 2007, more than 100 candidates hit that bar.) The low turnout also puts a small dent in Macron’s enormous mandate, as his presidential rival Marine Le Pen noted on Sunday. [...]
All that sort of underplays the extent of Macron’s success. His party is only 14 months old, so it held no seats in the National Assembly, whose members serve five-year terms. Experts weren’t even sure he could field enough candidates, let alone win a majority. Instead, his slate—half women, and with a significant number of minority candidates—is in pole position for the runoff next weekend.
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