French parliamentary elections continue amid low turnout and En Marche dominance

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France's Socialists who had ruled the country after 2012 have suffered a disastrous defeat, ending up fifth, with about 9% of the votes.

"While the political situation in the United Kingdom has become more complicated, across the Channel, conventional wisdom appears to have been turned on its head as Macron's new party.has swept the board in the first round of French parliamentary elections, no mean feat for a movement that didn't even exist two years ago", said CMC Markets chief market analyst Michael Hewson.

LREM party president Catherine Barbaroux thanked voters because "their choice has a clear meaning: they want the action taken by Emmanuel Macron, since his election to the Presidency of the Republic, to be continued".

Pollsters project Macron's alliance could win as many as three-quarters of the seats in the lower house after next week's second round of voting.

The president needs a strong majority in order to push through his promised reforms of France's strict labor laws, and its ailing social security system. ("Forward!") previous year before he ran for the French Presidency.

It was the second setback for the anti-establishment party in barely a month after its leader Marine Le Pen reached the presidential run-off vote only to be soundly beaten by Emmanuel Macron and his bid to renew French politics from the center.

Just a month after the 39-year-old won a bitter and drawn-out battle for the presidency, some questioned whether he had a mandate to pursue a pro-business reform agenda. ("The Republic on the Move!"), abbreviated as LREM, and attracted dissenters from the French Socialist Party, the conservative Republicans party, and smaller parties.

The National Front is expected to take 13.1%, leaving it with between one and four seats, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon's far-left party is expected to claim between 10-20 seats after accounting for 11% of the vote.

Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher who specialises in the far-right, said turnout at parliamentary elections among the party's core working class support base was traditionally low and an obstacle the party had once again failed to surmount.

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"The emoluments clauses command that. the president put the country first and not his own personal interest first". The Justice Department has already asked the court to dismiss a separate lawsuit that covers similar ground.

The Senate, the upper house, will be elected by an electoral college September 24.

"For the past month, the president has shown confidence, willingness and daring in France and on the global stage", Philippe said, calling the result a vindication of Macron's "winning strategy".

Macron's victory was so massive that it was not significantly overshadowed by the fact that the turnout in the first round of the French National Assembly vote was only 50%, the lowest since 1958.

Her defeat in May brought huge relief to European allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain's Brexit vote and Donald Trump's election as USA president, and disappointment to the party faithful.

According to the Ipsos/Sopra Steria projection, the conservative Republicans and their allies will get between 70 and 110 MP seats after the second round. Le Pen had campaigned for France to quit the single currency - a move unpopular even among many National Front supporters.

Between 7 and 12 MP seats are forecast to go to other political parties.

The radical-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party of Jean-Luc Melenchon who finished fourth in the presidential race also fell short of expectations.

In a televised speech, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, said despite love voter turnout, millions of French gave their "confidence in the project of Emmanuel Macron". The final outcome will be decided in the second round of voting next Sunday, reported BBC.

The far-right formation had been hoping to pick up at least 15 MP seats so that it can be allowed to form a parliamentary group of their own, and is now projected to win only somewhere from one to five seats in the French National Assembly. The FN's deputy leader Florian Philippot admitted to " disappointment" and called on voters to "mobilise massively " for the second round.

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