French president Emmanuel Macron's new party, La République En Marche (LREM), is set to take an absolute majority in the national assembly after securing 32.2 per cent of votes in the first round of legislative elections on Sunday. That will translate into a majority of up to 440 seats out of 577 in the assembly in the second round next Sunday.

But Mr. Macron's second victory, just a month after he became France's youngest president, was lessened by record abstention of 50.2 per cent. In their reactions, Mr. Macron's opponents focused on the high abstention rate and pleaded with to supporters to mobilize strongly over the coming week.

The extreme right-wing Front National (FN), whose figurehead Marine Le Pen won 34 percent of the vote in the presidential run-off on May 7th, won only 14 percent of the vote on Sunday, which will give the party between three and 10 seats in the National Assembly.