A second round of voting is scheduled for June 19. If after that the Ensemble falls below the 289 threshold for an absolute majority – something the big polls suggest as a possibility, Macron will become the first reigning French president not to win a parliamentary majority since the 2000 electoral reform. “The truth is that the presidential party, after the first round, has been beaten and defeated,” Melanson said on Sunday after announcing the early predictions. Sunday’s vote was overshadowed by low voter enthusiasm, with voter turnout estimated at 47 percent, according to Interior Ministry figures – the lowest for the first round of parliamentary elections since 1958, when the current French Thursday was founded. Democracy. Some results from the Home Office also showed that the far-right National Coalition and the established right-wing Republican and its allies are behind, at 19.9 percent and 10.58 percent respectively. Meanwhile, right-wing political commentator Éric Zemmour – whose new far-right party Reconquest! had garnered less than 5% of the vote in the first round – he did not advance to the next round of voting for his target seat. Just like the presidential elections, the parliamentary elections in France operate in a two-round system. If no one wins more than half of the votes in the first round, then all candidates who received at least 12.5 percent of the registered voters qualify for the second round. The Elysium announced in May that government ministers who lost the parliamentary elections would have to resign from their cabinet posts. Among the 15 ministerial-level candidates running for office, many are at risk of losing, including Clément Beaune, the deputy minister for Europe, who played a key role in France’s response to the Ukraine crisis.
