Le Pen set to fall short of French majority, polling shows

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is set to fall well short of an absolute majority in the French legislative election on Sunday, according to projections from three polling companies.

The far-right group and its allies are on course to win between 190 and 250 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, based on the three surveys released on Wednesday and Thursday. That would be significantly below the 289 that would enable it to pass bills easily and push through its agenda.

The second round of the snap election takes place on Sunday with 501 districts still up for grabs. The National Rally and its allies already won 39 races outright in the first round after they garnered 33.2% of the total vote.

“We’re not seeing the National Rally surging, as if they’d already pulled in the crowds in the first round,” Ifop political polling director François Kraus told Le Figaro newspaper.

President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the lower house of parliament nearly four weeks ago and called a snap vote after his group was trounced in European elections.

France has been shaken by the prospect of the far right taking control of the government after spending more than 50 years keeping it at bay. It’s forced several other parties that had been at each other’s throats to swallow their animosity and come up with a largely unified electoral front in order to see off the threat.

The decision to call an election sparked a major selloff in French assets, with the benchmark CAC 40 Index losing as much as 6.5% and the gap between French and German 10-year yields widening to a peak of 86 basis points last week. Both bonds and stocks have since recovered some of their losses as the prospect of Le Pen winning an absolute majority wanes.

The index was up 0.8% on the day on Thursday, led by banking shares including Societe Generale SA, Credit Agricole SA and BNP Paribas SA. The euro and French bonds were little changed.

Macron’s centrist alliance and the New Popular Front strategically pulled more than 200 candidates from runoff ballots this week to avoid splitting opposition to the far right in an attempt at building a so-called Republican front.

The latest projections suggest the strategy is working. Polling companies had given ranges that stretched as high as 305 seats for the National Rally and its allies after first-round voting ended last Sunday.

Ifop now projects Le Pen’s group would win between 210 and 240 seats, while Odoxa gave a range of 210 to 250 lawmakers. A previous poll from Toluna-Harris Interactive released on Wednesday put National Rally on 190 to 220 seats.

The New Popular Front would win between 170 and 200 seats, while 95 to 125 would go to Macron and his allies, according to Ifop. The polling company carried out an online survey of 1,916 registered voters on Wednesday and Thursday for LCI TV, Le Figaro newspaper and Sud Radio.

Odoxa projected 140 to 180 seats for the leftist coalition and 115 to 155 for the president’s group, based on online responses from 1,005 adults over the last two days in its poll for Mascaret, Public Senat, Presse Regionale and Le Nouvel Obs.

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(With assistance from Constantine Courcoulas and Blaise Robinson.)