Macron set for a landslide win

POLLS SHOW HE CAN TAKE 80% OF SEATS Few voters predicted to make their cross tomorrow in second round of election.

New French President Emmanuel Macron’s government reaffirmed yesterday its plan for electoral reform as the scale of the likely parliamentary majority it is set to win grew and predicted voter turnout shrank.

Two opinion polls ahead of tomorrow’s second round of elections said the centrist president and his one year-old Republic on the Move (REM) party would win 80% of the seats in the lower house of parliament.

Those are the highest predictions of the campaign to date and follow record-low voter turnout in the first round. Macron’s opponents warn that such a majority in a country with deep political divisions is a threat to democracy.

REM’s dominance of parliament would be the biggest in decades by any party, even though it gathered only about a third of votes in round one.

More than half of the electorate did not vote, and many said they saw no purpose in doing so. Thursday’s polls show even fewer will turn out in round two.

France’s two-round voting system, used in all types of elections including the April-May presidential contest that took Macron into power, eliminates low-scoring candidates in the first round.

Thanks to this system and to electoral pacts aimed at keeping National Front candidates out of parliament, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who won the support of a third of voters in the presidential election, looks set to get nothing like that representation in the legislature.

Polls show she could end up with only a handful of seats in the 577-strong National Assembly. Left and far-left lawmakers are also expected to be few.