Campaigning ended in France’s parliamentary elections Saturday with voters likely to give President Francois Hollande’s Socialists a majority as he seeks to steer the country through Europe’s debt crisis
Campaigning ended in France's parliamentary elections Saturday with voters likely to give President Francois Hollande's Socialists a majority as he seeks to steer the country through Europe's debt crisis.
Opinion polls released before the end of campaigning at midnight Friday showed Hollande's Socialists and their allies on track to take control of France's lower house National Assembly on Sunday.
Hollande, who defeated right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy in May's presidential election, has urged voters to give him a majority as he seeks to tackle Europe's financial crisis and France's rising unemployment and faltering economy.
The French vote risks being overshadowed however by elections in Greece that could determine its future in the eurozone, amid concern over the shockwaves that a Greek euro exit would send through the global economy.
The polls showed France's Socialists winning between 287 and 330 seats in Sunday's run-off election -- almost certainly enough to secure a majority in the 577-seat Assembly.
With polls showing the Greens, who are close allies of the Socialists and already in government, set to win up to 20 seats, Hollande is all but guaranteed to get the parliamentary backing he needs.
The Socialists and other left-wing parties came out on top in last Sunday's first round of the vote, winning 46 percent to 34 percent for Sarkozy's UMP party and its allies.
The vote will also be a key test for Marine Le Pen's anti-immigrant and anti-EU National Front (FN), which took 13.6 percent in the first round -- far above the four percent it won in the last parliamentary election in 2007.
Le Pen, who said the result confirmed her party's position as France's "third political force," is hoping the FN will be able to take a handful of seats including one for her in a rundown former mining constituency near the northern city of Lille.
Polls indicate the FN are set to win up to three seats, including for Le Pen and for Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the FN leader's 22-year-old niece, in the southern Vaucluse area.
