A divided France braced Saturday for high-stakes parliamentary elections that could see the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic party of Marine Le Pen sweep to power in a historic first.
The candidates formally ended their frantic campaigns at midnight Friday, with political activity banned until Sunday's first round of voting.
Most polls show that Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) is on course to win the largest number of National Assembly seats, though it remains unclear if the party will secure an outright majority.
A high turnout is predicted and final opinion polls have given the RN between 35 percent and 37 percent of the vote, against 27.5-29 percent for the left wing New Popular Front alliance and 20-21 percent for President Emmanuel Macron's centrist camp.
That would put France on course for political chaos and confusion with a hung parliament, said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy.
"There is no precedent in recent French politics for such an impasse," Rahman said.
Macron's decision to call snap elections after the RN's runaway victory in European Parliament elections this month stunned friends and foes and sparked uncertainty in Europe's second-biggest economy.
The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 percent.
In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilise against the far right.
"Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone," it said.
Brice Teinturier, head of the Ipsos polling firm, said there were two tendancies coming out of the campaign.
"One is a dynamic of hope" with left wing and RN supporters believing that "there can be a change".
But Teinturier also highlighted "the negative politicisation, the fear, the dread caused by the RN and in a part of the electorate by the France Unbowed and the coalition of the left".
Macron apparently hoped to catch political opponents off guard by presenting voters with a crucial choice about France's future, but observers say he might have lost his gamble.
Many have pointed to a spike in hate speech, intolerance and racism during the charged campaign. A video of two RN supporters verbally assaulting a black woman has gone viral in recent days.
Speaking on the sidelines of a European summit in Brussels late Thursday, Macron deplored "racism or anti-Semitism".
Support for Macron's centrist camp collapsed during the campaign, while left-wing parties put their bickering aside and to form the New Popular Front, in a nod to an alliance founded in 1936 to combat fascism.
Support for the far right has surged, with analysts saying Le Pen's years-long efforts to clean up the image of a party co-founded by a former Waffen SS member have paid off.
"If we come to power, we'll be able to demonstrate to the French people that we'll keep our promises," Le Pen wrote on X, vowing to bolster purchasing power and "curb insecurity and immigration".
Under Macron, France has been one of Ukraine's main Western backers since Russia invaded in February 2022.
But Le Pen and her 28-year-old lieutenant, party chief Jordan Bardella, have said they would scale down French support for Ukraine, by ruling out the sending of ground troops and long-range missiles.
Le Pen has ratcheted up tensions further by saying that the president's commander-in-chief title was purely "honorific".
If the far right obtains an absolute majority after the second round of voting on July 7, Bardella could become prime minister in a tense "cohabitation" with Macron.
His party's path to victory could be blocked if the left and centre-right join forces against the RN in the second round.
A defiant Macron has stood by his decision to call the elections, while warning voters that a win by the far right or hard left could spark a "civil war" in France.
He has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term until 2027, no matter which party wins the legislative contest.
