Thousands of enraged voters took to the streets, smashing shop windows and letting off fireworks as riot police were deployed across the city.
Marine Le Pen’s RN took 33% of the Sunday vote, followed by the socialist Nouveau Front Populaire party with 28%, while President Emmanuel Macron took just 20%.
Sunday’s snap election, which Macron called in the wake of last month’s European Parliament vote in which the RN gave his centrist party a clobbering, drew 69.7% of voters, the highest turnout for parliamentary elections since 1986.
Reacting to the results, Le Pen said: “Democracy has spoken out, the French people have placed the Rassemblement National and its allies at the forefront, they have almost erased Macron’s bloc.”
Eric Ciotti, President of the center-right The Republicans Party, added that through his alliance with RN’s President Jordan Bardella, he is looking to build a right-wing government “to re-establish order on our streets” and “fight mass immigration”.
The final outcome of the elections will be decided after next week’s run-off, to be held on July 7, less than a month before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris.
But the results so far leave the far-right closer to power than it has ever been, and, according to the BFMTV news channel, could see it dominating the National Assembly with as many as 260 to 310 seats.
This is twice as many as Macron’s party.
