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President Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of avoiding a wipeout in the first round of France’s snap parliamentary election received a boost when fresh opinion polls showed his centrist alliance gaining ground.
An IFOP poll for Le Figaro, LCI et Sud Radio, a new daily survey, on Thursday put the centrists on 22 per cent for the first round vote on June 30, up from 18 per cent in a poll conducted on June 10-11. A Toluna Harris Interactive poll for Challenges, M6 and RTL put the alliance on 21 per cent.
Both polls predict the far-right Rassemblement National will be the clear winner, with 34 per cent according to IFOP and 33 in the Harris survey. The leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire bloc was at 29 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.
A third poll by OpinionWay on Friday put the RN on 35 per cent and the centrists on 20 per cent.
Seat projections by Harris suggest France is mostly likely heading for a hung parliament, which could lead to political gridlock.
The president’s alliance, which comprises Macron’s Renaissance party and two others, won 14.6 per cent in European parliament elections on June 9, coming third. That result prompted Macron to dissolve parliament in a shock move that stunned his allies and the country at large. Polls in the immediate aftermath of his decision showed his party languishing in the mid-teens.
Advisers to the centrist campaign and political analysts have warned that it was at risk of being squeezed out of the vast majority of second-round run-off places unless it started to gain traction by this weekend with polling support at least in the low-20s.
The surveys indicate that Macron’s camp has gained some momentum during the first official week of the campaign in which his standard-bearer, the outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has been omnipresent on television and in debates.
Macron’s allies this week have been anxiously trying to counter a perception among French voters that the only way to stop the far right is to vote on June 30 for the NFP, which has a radical left tax-and-spend agenda.
“The French people have a choice between three blocs and three paths,” Attal told journalists on Thursday.
In parliamentary elections, candidates need to win 12.5 per cent of registered voters in order to qualify for the second round taking place on July 7, which means hitting 20 per cent if turnout, as pollsters predict, is 65 per cent. A higher turnout means the threshold for entering the second round run-off goes down, which would help Macron’s alliance.
According to Harris projections, the RN would emerge as the largest party in the 577-strong National Assembly with 220-250 seats, but short of an absolute majority. The leftwing would win 135-165 and Macron’s alliance 95-130, half of its current 250 seats.
In another lift for the centrist camp, OpinionWay and the political analyst Chloé Morin this week produced research which suggests that candidates from Macron’s alliance were more likely to prevail over the far right in two-way run-off races than candidates from the leftwing.
In so-called dual contests between the RN and NPF, 41 per cent of respondents said they would vote for the far right and 34 per cent would vote left. In duals between RN and Macron’s alliance, the centrists would come on top, with 44 per cent, compared with 36 per cent of voters opting for the far right.
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