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Macron’s Party Leading in French Parliamentary Vote
(about 3 hours later)
PARIS — When Emmanuel Macron was campaigning to become the president of France, he laid out an ambitious plan to overhaul what many said were untouchable pillars of the country — retirement benefits and employee protections, for example — in order to make the country more competitive.
PARIS — As the first returns in Sunday’s parliamentary elections began to trickle in, French voters appeared to be rallying behind candidates on the ticket of the newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron.
When he won an upset victory and began choosing a cabinet to carry out his plan, many questioned whether Mr. Macron, 39, could ever come up with enough legislative candidates to pass his agenda. But he did, selecting a roster of newcomers to politics that included minorities and many women.
Based on preliminary results from France’s 577 districts, pollsters projected that candidates for Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche, would receive 32 percent in voting for the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the French Parliament.
On Sunday, the French were voting in the first of two rounds for representatives to the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the French Parliament. In essence, they are voting whether to back the man, his cabinet and his plan.
If that holds up, it would far outpace the results of any other major party, all but assuring that Mr. Macron and his party will control the next parliamentary session, although nothing is certain until next week’s second-round vote.
The participation rate at 5 p.m. local time, nearly 41 percent, was considerably lower than the turnout at the same time in the first round in 2012, when it was 48.3 percent, according to the Interior Ministry. It was even higher in 2007: 49.3 percent.
Those candidates garnering 50 percent or more of the votes in their districts will be declared the winner. But given the large number of candidates for each seat, most of the top vote getters will face a runoff next Sunday.
The polls close in three hours in major cities and earlier in the countryside.
To claim a majority in Parliament, candidates supporting Mr. Macron will need to win at least 289 seats. Failing that, he has formed an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement to help assure a majority. However, as things now stand, it appears all but certain that the 39-year-old president will have a majority — and potentially a large one.
Mr. Macron needs an outright majority in the 577-seat National Assembly to have a clear path to enact his sweeping program. His party and an allied party that is running with his are fielding candidates in more than 400 districts.
Parties on the extreme right and left seemed to be faring badly, gaining far fewer votes nationwide than they had in the first round of the presidential election, on May 7. Pollsters said that Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front would take about 14 percent of the vote while Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftist France Unbowed Party was expected to win just 11 percent of the votes.
If 289 or more from the president’s party are elected, he will have his majority. Any fewer would mean having to work with other parties, or worse. If another party were to obtain a majority, it could impose a new prime minister and government on Mr. Macron — seriously hampering his ability to carry out domestic changes.
At the same time, the traditional parties on the left and the right have been weakened, with the Socialists looking particularly feeble. Having controlled the Parliament over the last five years, the Socialists were expected to win just 10 percent of the vote this year. The Republicans fared better, with their projected 21 percent share the highest after Mr. Macron’s party.
However, if the polls are any measure, Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche!, is expected to win a comfortable majority.
Because of differences between the districts, nationwide vote totals do not translate into a set number of seats in the Parliament. There are frequently runoffs with two, three or four candidates, since anyone taking more than 12.5 percent of the vote is eligible for the second round.
His victory in the presidential race on May 7 decimated the establishment parties, the Socialists and the Republicans.
Over all, however, the legislative elections appeared to have engendered less enthusiasm than both the presidential elections a few weeks ago and recent legislative elections.
Both the right and left will probably end up with small fractions of Mr. Macron’s total. The far-right National Front, the party of Marine Le Pen, Mr. Macron’s presidential runoff opponent, is predicted to gain more seats than it ever has before, but far fewer than its leaders had hoped. It may include one for Ms. Le Pen in the country’s far north.
This year, according to exit polls, about 50 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the legislative elections, compared with 57 percent in 2012 and 60 percent in 2007.
Mr. Macron’s party is fielding a large number of candidates who have never held political office and who work in either civil service or business.
Whatever the outcome, what is most striking about this election is how a nation that a year ago seemed to be on the verge of being swept up in the right-wing populist and nationalist wave in Europe has instead given a wide-armed embrace to Mr. Macron, a centrist and unabashed globalist who has called for weakening France’s protective labor laws and potentially reducing some retirement benefits for some workers.
In fact, with very few disqualifying conditions, any French citizen 18 or older can run for the National Assembly, the more powerful of the Parliament’s two chambers.
The election — if a majority of Mr. Macron’s candidates win in the runoff, as it appears they will — seems to reflect the voters’ readiness to get on with his agenda.
Candidates are elected directly by voters in France and the country’s overseas territories. A candidate does not have to live or vote in the district in which he or she is running. The ease of entry means that, over all, there are more than 7,800 candidates; in some districts, there are more than 17 vying for the seat.
The French president needs a majority in the National Assembly, the French Parliament, to pass legislation. With a strong showing for his party even in the first round, it suggests the French are signaling that they are ready to give his ideas a try. However, France has elected a series of presidents promising to change its labor and pension laws — both Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and François Hollande on the left made similar proposals — only to find that many in France turned against them when they tried to follow through with the changes.
Political parties have a lot to gain financially in these elections, because they receive funding from the state based not only on the number of candidates elected, but also on the percentage of the vote the party gets nationwide, provided that its candidates in at least 50 districts receive more than 1 percent of the vote.
In the past several elections, there was no question that once the French voted for a president, they would vote for his party in the legislature to assure him a majority. However, in the case of Mr. Macron, that was initially in doubt. In 2012, Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party and its allies won 40 percent of the votes in the first round and in 2007 Mr. Sarkozy’s Republican Party and its allies won 46 percent; they both won majorities in the second round.
This gives an incentive to small parties — whose candidates have little chance of making it into the runoff — to compete. Notably, parties are penalized financially if they fail to field an equal number of male and female candidates.
Like Mr. Macron, both men had won the presidency for the first time just weeks before the legislative vote. In Mr. Macron’s case, however, that was initially in doubt. His La République en Marche movement was founded only about 14 months ago, and his core idea of combining proposals from the left and the right of the political spectrum in pursuit of a common agenda was slow to take off.
A candidate who receives more than half the votes wins outright, as long as that vote total exceeds 25 percent of the number of eligible voters in the district. Any candidates who receive votes from more than 12.5 percent of the total number of eligible voters in their district will compete in runoff elections, which will be held on June 18.
Another reason to question whether he could gain a majority in Parliament was his central campaign promise to bring in many newcomers from civil society as candidates. He was good to his word, but that meant running candidates in many districts who had little or no name recognition.
Most runoffs involve just two candidates, but can involve three or four. In the second round, the candidate with the most votes wins.
But this seems not to have been a factor. The attraction of candidates untainted by politics seems to have outweighed the drawbacks of running a slate of virtual unknowns. There seems to be so much enthusiasm for Mr. Macron’s promise to bring a new political climate and an agenda that will bring growth to France that people are eager to support his candidates almost no matter what.
With the collapse of traditional parties and the rapid rise of a party that is barely a year old, the legislative elections are shaping up to be historic for the Fifth Republic, said Marc Abélès, a professor of political anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
The first legislative elections were held under Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero who was elected president in 1958. As it did in Mr. de Gaulle’s case, the election beginning Sunday will determine the overall support for the newly elected president’s sweeping program.
Mr. Macron will need a parliamentary majority to turn his proposals into law.
The election also will be a reflection of how voters view the political landscape. If the polls are accurate, there is a broad and deep disillusionment with the Socialists and the Republicans, the traditional political parties on the left and right, and even those on the far left and far right, including with the National Front.
Typically, the turnout is lower for legislative elections than for presidential ones. While the turnout is generally expected to be 60 percent to 70 percent this year, recent polling suggests it could be lower.
At noon local time, it was 19.24 percent, less than the 21.06 percent in 2012, according to the Interior Ministry. At 5 p.m., it was 40.75 percent, down sharply from previous years.
• The abstention rate, which could be an indicator of voters’ current enthusiasm for politics.
• Whether high-profile defeated presidential candidates who are running in legislative races — such as the far-right candidate Ms. Le Pen and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon — make it to the second round.
• How many of Mr. Macron’s candidates make it to the second round, and with what kind of vote totals.
