The French far-right nationalists are clearly leading the first round of the early parliamentary elections, based on provisional results from the Interior Ministry on Monday.
Marine Le Pen's party, National Rally (RN), and its allies achieved 33.15% of the votes. The left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) alliance stands at 27.99%, while President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Ensemble (Together) alliance comes in at 20.04%. The conservative Republicans scored 10.23%.
According to figures from the Ipsos opinion research institute after the first round of the vote, National Rally received a particularly high number of votes from working-class voters and people without higher educational qualifications.
It also scored points with its traditional electorate but also expanded its voter base overall, gaining significantly more support from women and people under 35, Ipsos said.
Macron's camp primarily received votes from senior citizens and the financially better-off. According to Ipsos, Macron's alliance lost votes across the entire electorate and not just within specific groups.
The NPF was primarily chosen by younger people, people in larger cities and those with higher educational qualifications.
Overall, significantly more people voted on Sunday compared to the first round of parliamentary elections in previous decades, Ipsos said. Voter turnout stood at 66.71%. However, Ipsos said that no camp benefited more than others from this mobilization.
For Macron, the result is a bitter defeat. He had been seeking to secure a clear majority in the lower house for the centrist forces led by his Renaissance party.
How many seats the blocs will get in the National Assembly will only be decided in run-off elections next Sunday.
Before the second round of voting, parties can still forge local alliances that could influence the election outcome.
Candidates securing an absolute majority in their constituency in the first round are elected to the assembly, but in most constituencies, the victor will emerge only after the second round on Sunday.
According to forecasts, National Rally is likely to become the strongest force next Sunday. However, it could narrowly miss an absolute majority.
In the first round of voting, a total of 76 seats were directly allocated, including 37 to National Rally candidates and two more to far-right candidates. Le Pen is also set to enter the National Assembly directly without a run-off.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal gave a stark warning on Sunday evening: "The far right is at the gates of power ... Our objective is clear: to prevent the RN from getting elected in the second round."
Meanwhile, German politician and France expert Franziska Brantner said that the votes of young people could be the deciding factor in the second round of the parliamentary elections in France.
Many are disappointed with Macron, said Brantner, who is a lawmaker in the German lower house, or Bundestag, and also a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, in an interview on Monday with public radio Deutschlandfunk.
It now depends on whether young people who voted in favour of the left-wing alliance in the first round on Sunday are still prepared to support a candidate from Macron's alliance.
"Whether the mobilization works here is, I think, one of the big issues for next Sunday," she noted.
One challenge for the centre-left camp is that it has no figurehead, Brantner said.
"The parties have managed to form an alliance in such a short space of time, but have yet to agree on a single leader or a unified agenda. This is challenging at a time like this."
