The left-wing New People's Front leads the French elections, with President Emmanuel Macron's Together coalition in second place and the right-wing National Rally in third. However, no coalition has secured an absolute majority in the National Assembly, according to preliminary results from BFM TV.
The New People's Front left-wing coalition includes Jean-Luc Mélenchon's 'Unsubmissive' France, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Ecologists (formerly known as 'Europe Ecology – The Greens'), and the 'New Anti-Capitalist Party.'
After the first results announcement, the leader of the left-wing coalition Jean-Luc Mélenchon urged French President Emmanuel Macron to acknowledge defeat in the elections, dismiss the current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, and allow the leftist coalition to form a new cabinet.
"The president's defeat is obvious... He must acknowledge it and not attempt to circumvent it... The prime minister must resign... The president is obliged to call the New People's Front to power," Mélenchon said, addressing his supporters.
At the headquarters of the Socialist Party, the results of the snap parliamentary elections were met with loud applause and cheers, a Sputnik correspondent reports from the party headquarters in Paris.
Hundreds of people, including politicians, journalists, and other guests, gathered at the headquarters to await the election results.
Party deputies shouted "Thank you!" while the crowd chanted "For the New People's Front!"
After the announcement of the official results, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure said that in the coming days, the New People's Front must embark on a collective project for the future of France and its people.
"The New People's Front must take responsibility for a new chapter in our history. We will have only one compass: the compass of the New People's Front program," Olivier Faure told journalists at the Paris headquarters.
On Sunday, the second round of the snap elections to the National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament) was held in France. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the turnout at 5 p.m. local time was 59.71%, almost twice as high as the turnout in the second round of the 2022 parliamentary elections.
The first round of elections was held last Sunday, June 30. At that time, the right-wing National Rally party, along with allies from the Republican Party, received 33.15% of the votes, the left-wing New People's Front bloc received 27.99%, and the coalition of President Emmanuel Macron came in third with 20.04%.