Posted on 06/16/2022 4:15:09 AM PDT by FarCenter
The duel between Emmanuel Macron's incumbent majority and Jean-Luc Mélenchon's pan-leftist NUPES coalition duly dominated the spotlight on Sunday after the first round of France's legislative elections. But far-right National Rally flagbearer Marine Le Pen had a red-letter night at the ballot box. Even at the low end of seat projections for next Sunday's run-off, Le Pen will have shored up party finances, seen off a pesky political foe and guaranteed herself a gilded soapbox for five more years.
The far right is rarely a focal point in French parliamentary polls. It has long been a political truism in France that the legislative elections – 577 individual seat races in two rounds, majority wins, for the lower-house National Assembly – favour parties that can cast a wide net and cultivate parliamentary alliances, leaving the country's predominant go-it-alone far-right party, founded by Marine Le Pen's rabble-rousing father Jean-Marie half a century ago, out in the cold.
But on Sunday night Le Pen's National Rally (RN) dented that conventional wisdom with a historic showing, pending next week's run-off. Standing for re-election in northern France, Le Pen herself fell just short of winning outright in the election's opening round with 53.96 percent of the vote. She'll wage a comfortable run-off next Sunday while her party vies for dozens of new parliamentary seats. And she has managed it all despite running a conspicuously casual campaign.
"The second round offers us the opportunity to send a very large group of patriotic deputies to the new National Assembly," Le Pen declared Sunday, smiling in the wind on an outdoor stage in Hénin-Beaumont, northern France, pledging to represent "honest folks" in the chamber with a far-right group vast "as never before in the political history of our country".
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
France has the same problem we do: The people COUNTING the votes.
53.96% and she needs a run-off?
The duel between Emmanuel Macron’s incumbent majority... should read, “The duel between Emmanuel Macron’s FAR-LEFT incumbent majority...”
“Duly dominated”...not much bias there!
They throw around the term “far-right” without ever saying what pushes them to “far-right” status.
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