French parties scramble to strike voting pacts to keep out far right

France's left and centrist parties are scrambling to cobble together a united front after Marine Le Pen's resounding victory in the first round of snap parliamentary elections on Sunday brought her far-right, antiimmigration party a step closer to power.

- Angelique Chrisafis, Sam Jones

Le Pen's National Rally (RN) and its allies on the right finished first with 33% of the vote, followed by the leftwing New Popular Front alliance (NFP) with 28%, while President Emmanuel Macron's centrist bloc came third with 22% of the vote.

Most of the 577 seats in the national assembly will now be decided in a second-round runoff this Sunday.

Rival parties were engaged in frantic bargaining and tactical voting plans yesterday to try to stop the RN's rise.

Le Pen's party is on track to dominate parliament but the number of seats is not yet decided. Whether it can make the difficult leap to the absolute majority of 289 seats needed to form a government will depend on political deal-making by its rivals over the coming days.

The centrist prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who is likely to be forced to resign after the second round, warned that the far right was at the "gates of power" and said the RN should not get a "single vote" in the second round.

In the past, when confronted with the far right nearing power, the traditional right and leftwing parties have struck agreements to stand down candidates from the runoffs to avoid splitting the vote. But the tactical voting strategy known as the "republican front" is less certain than ever. Leaders of Macron's centrist alliance and the NFP indicated they would withdraw their own candidates in districts where another candidate was better placed to beat the RN, though it was not clear how uniformly this would apply.