PARIS — Following the Senate and the presidency, the French parliament was on course to swing left Sunday after a decade in the hands of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement.
PARIS — Following the Senate and the presidency, the French parliament was on course to swing left Sunday after a decade in the hands of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement.
President Francois Hollandes Socialist Party and other left-wing factions combined to edge out the party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of elections to the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
The Socialists and the UMP both won 34.8 percent of the vote, Ipsos polling institute estimated on the basis of partial results. The far-right National Front came third with an estimated 13.4 percent, ahead of the Communist-backed Left Front with 6.8 percent and the Greens with 5.5 percent.
While the right won more votes than the left Sunday, the combined was forecast to win a majority of seats in next weeks runoff.
A projection published by Ipsos showed the Socialists winning 270 to 300 seats in the 577-member assembly next week, compared with 227 to 266 seats for the UMP and no more than two seats for the Nationl Front
Add in the Greens (12 to 16 seats) and the radical Left Front (13 to 18 seats) and the Socialists could easily assemble a majority of 289 seats.
Hollande could still achieve his desired “large, solid and coherent majority” for the Socialists.
An absolute majority would give Hollande free rein to implement his program, which aims to boost growth and employment while slashing the budget deficit.
Barring a majority, the party may have to haggle with the anti-Europe, anti-banker Left Front to pass legislation.
That could force Hollandes program further to the left and constrain his attempts to bring the budget deficit in line with a European Union target of 3 percent by 2013.
The European Union has already warned France that it is likely to miss its deficit target for 2013 unless it cuts spending.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who was re-elected in his home constituency of Nantes on Sunday, urged voters to give the Socialists “a large and coherent majority.”
Without a clear majority, he said, “the voice of France will be weakened in Europe and the world.”
UMP leader Jean-Francois Cope said the Socialists’ failure to win an outright majority in the first round reflected concern among the French over Hollandes plans for hefty tax increases.
With the Elysee Palace, the Senate and most regions and major cities in Socialist hands, Cope urged the French “not to put all their eggs in the same basket.”
To National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who soundly defeated Left Front leader arch-rival Jean-Luc Melenchon in the northern Pas-de-Calais region with more than 42 percent of the vote, the election was proof that her anti-immigrant party and not the “bobo (bourgeois-bohemian)” Left Front was the party of the working class.