France is firmly in uncharted territory after President Emmanuel Macron’s snap elections gamble backfired and saw the opposition far-right National Rally (RN) party surge to a dramatic win in Sunday’s parliamentary first-round polls, analysts say.
Led by Marine Le Pen and her young protege, Jordan Bardella, the RN looks set to take the biggest chunk of the 577-seat lower house having come away from the first round of voting with 33 percent of the vote, nearly double the 18.9 percent share it won in the last parliamentary elections in 2022.
