"The prime minister remains a prime minister. She had the courage to go to the ballot box instead of lecturing on TV. Admittedly, the score is weak… but what really counts is that the prime minister was elected during these extremely difficult times," Olivia Gregoire told France Inter radio.
Borne was elected to the lower-house National Assembly for the northern Calvados region with 52.46% of the vote.
The governing coalition won 245 of the 577 seats, falling 44 seats short of a majority. The prime minister said after the voting that President Emmanuel Macron's Ensemble alliance would begin negotiations on Monday to build a "working majority" to be able to press on with reforms. Opposition parties promised to do the same.