Macron’s party on course for majority in French Parliament: Polls

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, met supporters during a visit to the harbor of Lorient, western France, on Thursday. (AFP)

PARIS: The new party of French President Emmanuel Macron is on course to win a solid lead in a parliamentary election this month with nearly a third of the vote in the first round ballot, a poll showed on Friday.
The findings of the Cevipof/Ipsos Sopra-Steria poll, which is much larger than most other surveys, offer further indications that Macron is set to win an absolute majority to push through his reform agenda.
The poll for Le Monde newspaper found that Macron’s Republic On The Move (LRM), launched in April 2016, was set to win 31 percent of the vote in the June 11 first round.
That would put the party well ahead of the conservative Republicans party and their allies at 22 percent.
The far right National Front was seen winning 18 percent of the vote while the hard-left France Unbowed was at 11.5 percent and the Socialists at 8.5 percent.
The poll, conducted on May 27-30 with a panel of nearly 15,000 people, also found that 64 percent of those surveyed had definitely made up their minds about whom they would vote for while the number was 71 percent for those backing Macron’s party.
The poll did not forecast an outcome for the second round which will decide whether or not the LRM has a majority in Parliament.
However, a separate Harris Interactive poll projected on Friday that LRM could win 330-360 seats in the lower house Parliament, based on a similar first-round vote estimates.
That largely mirrored the findings of a separate OpinionWay/ORPI poll on Thursday that projected an absolute majority of 335-355 for LREM.
All of the polls were conducted too early to reflect the impact of a public prosecutor opening an investigation into the financial dealings of Macron’s former campaign director Richard Ferrand.