MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the French Interior Ministry, 48.71 percent took part in the first round of the vote this year, while the turnout at the first round of the parliamentary election in 2012 was 57.22 percent.
"Why to vote for these legislative, since the government announced it will govern bypassing the national assembly and that anyway a victory of Macronist candidates was expected? There will be no better turnout at the second round, on the contrary, it will be slightly worse. Which means that the totally inexperienced elected member of parliament elected with Macron will have been elected by roughly 25% of the electorate. There is a legitimacy crisis in the French elected representative bodies," Sebastien Cochard said.
Centrist La Republique en Marche party, founded by President Emmanuel Macron, came in first with 28.21 percent of the votes. Pollsters predict that Macron’s party is on course to win as much as three quarters of the seats in the second round.
Cochard, however, argued that the recent results did not reflect the actual popularity of competing political groups.
"I want to insist that there is NO landslide from Macron in terms of actual votes. Only 48% of the electorate voted. Macron's candidates gathered 28%, which means that Macron's candidates gathered 13% of the electorate, which is less than Macron did at the first round of the presidential election: he got then 24% with a participation rate of 80%, which means he got 19% of the electorate. Thus Macron himself is having a setback of 33% less votes," he pointed.
The right-wing Republicans gained 15.77 percent, while National Front had 13.2 percent and the left-wing La France Insoumise got 11.02 percent. The previously ruling Socialist Party got 7.44 percent.
