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Macron's party to win majority in France's parliamentary election: poll

Xinhua, May 3, 2017 Adjust font size:

Independent frontrunner Emmanuel Macron's "En Marche!" (On the Move) party is currently foreseen to win a majority in the upcoming French parliamentary election, an OpinionWay-SLPV Analytics poll showed on Wednesday.

Among mainland France constituencies, which make up 535 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, the survey found that centrist movement would win 249 to 286 seats in the June legislative election.

Conservatives and centrist allies would emerge as the second main party in the country's lower house of parliament, winning a predicted 200 to 210 seats, while the Socialist Party would win 28 to 43 seats.

The far-right National Front (FN) party, which has built momentum following public anger at political mainstream parties who failed to live up to their economic promises, would snatch up 15 to 25 seats.

"This shows that it is not impossible for "En Marche" to reach an absolute majority...with the French abroad and overseas departments included," said Bruno Jeanbart, deputy director-general at OpinionWay.

"In the low hypothesis, the party would be the main group, which will be enough to try to form a majority. The question is how and with whom," he added.

An absolute majority in the National Assembly is 289 seats.

Earlier on Wednesday, a senior far-right party official said FN's Marine Le Pen would call for a referendum on French electoral law if she were to win the presidential elections on May 7, but her party failed to win a parliamentary majority.

"If the new Assembly is hostile to us, we would change the electoral law via a referendum organized as soon as next summer, then the president would dissolve the National Assembly," FN official Gilles Lebreton, told the satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine.

Macron and Le Pen face off in a run-off on May 7. Pollsters predict the ex-economy minister to win the race with a large lead against his rival. Endit