French election LIVE: Far right defeated in French election, finds shock exit poll

Emmanuel Macron is in an “untenable” situation, Marine Le Pen has warned, insisting her far-right National Rally had lost only as a result of tactical voting between the leftist New Popular Front alliance and Mr Macron’s Ensemble group.

“Our victory has been merely delayed,” she told TF1 TV.

Prime minister Gabriel Attal has that he will tender his resignation to Mr Macron, but said he was willing to carry out his functions as long as required.

It came as the Elysee Palace said the president himself would wait for the full picture to emerge in parliament before taking the necessary next decisions, but “will respect the choice of French people”.

Mr Attal became France’s youngest prime minister in history when he was appointed in January by Mr Macron at the age of 34, having previously served as minister for education.

Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo has warned that Emmanuel Macron has suffered another “resounding defeat” despite France voting to see off the far right, according to exit poll predictions.

In a statement reported by Le Parisien, Ms Hidalgo said: “This evening, France escaped the worst thanks to the mobilisation of voters who chose the Republic, by preventing the RN from having a majority in the National Assembly. This is good news for our country, the far right is not in the majority.”

“However, no absolute majority has emerged from the results of the legislative elections,” Ms Hidalgo added.

“The situation of instability that we are going through has only one person responsible: Emmanuel Macron who, on the evening of June 9, deliberately made the choice to plunge the country into a major political crisis.

“This evening, he is once again suffering, after the European elections, a resounding defeat. He will have to draw all the consequences from this.”

The far-right National Rally’s leader, Jordan Bardella, said on Sunday that France had been “thrown into the hands of the far left” after his party failed to win the French parliamentary elections, according to exit polls.

“After deliberately paralysing our institutions, Emmanuel Macron has not pushed the country towards uncertainty and instability. As a result, he has deprived the French people of any response to their day-to-day difficulties for many months to come,” said Bardella.

He pledged his party will “amplify” its work in the opposition.

The projected results would be a major disappointment for Marine Le Pen’s nationalist, eurosceptic National Rally (RN).

The party, which had for weeks been projected to win the election, is on course for 115 to 155 seats.

The first official results are expected later on Sunday, with the results from most, if not all, constituencies likely to be in by the end of the day or the early hours of Monday.

Voters have punished Macron and his ruling alliance for a cost of living crisis and for failing public services, as well as over immigration and security.

Le Pen and her party tapped into those grievances, spreading their appeal way beyond their traditional strongholds along the Mediterranean coast and in the country’s northern rust belt.

But the leftwing alliance looks like it has edged them out of the first spot, in part thanks to limited cooperation by Macron’s centrist Together alliance and the left.

Le Pen’s rivals pulled more than 200 candidates out of three-way races in the second round in a bid to create a unified anti-RN vote.

The constitution mandates that there can be no new parliamentary election for another year.

If the projected hung parliament is confirmed, it will leave parliament divided into three big groups with different platforms and no tradition of working together.

The leftist alliance, which gathers the hard left, the Socialists and Greens, who have long been at odds with each other, was forecast to win between 172 and 215 seats out of 577 in the exit polls.

Cries of joy and tears of relief broke out at the leftist alliance’s gathering in Paris. At the Greens’ headquarters activists screamed in joy, embracing each other.

By contrast there was stunned silence, clenched jaws and tears at the far-right party headquarters, as young National Rally members checked their phones.

The result will in any case be humiliating for Macron, whose centrist alliance, which he founded to underpin his first presidential run in 2017, was projected to be narrowly second and win 150-180 seats.

French Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has hailed the exit poll results as providing “immense relief for a majority of people in our country” as the far-right were forecast to have failed to achieve the first-place result expected in polls.

But the far-left leader demanded the resignation of prime minister Gabriel Attal after Ipsos polling put his New Popular Front coalition in first place.

Mr Melenchon is the most prominent of the leftist leaders who unexpectedly came together ahead of the two-round elections, and who struck up a last-minute “republican front” with the Macron-backing Ensemble party to pull candidates out of the final ballot in order to present a single opponent against the far-right.

France is on course for a hung parliament, according to exit polls which put the leftist New Popular Front coalition in first place – followed by the Macron-backing Ensemble and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.

The outcome, if confirmed, will leave parliament divided in three big groups with hugely different platforms and no tradition at all of working together.

That could potentially herald a period of instability, unless the left manages to strike a deal with other parties to work together.

The leftist alliance was forecast to win between 172 and 215 seats out of 577, pollsters’ projections based on early results from a sample of polling stations showed. These projections are usually reliable.

The result would in any case be humiliating for French President Emmanuel Macron, whose centrist alliance, which he founded to underpin his first presidential run in 2017, was projected to be narrowly second and win 150-180 seats.

But it will also be a major disappointment for Marine Le Pen’s nationalist, eurosceptic National Rally(RN).

France’s far-right National Rally have failed to become the largest party in parliamentary elections, according to shock exit poll results forecasting the left-wing New Popular Front coalition is in pole position.

In results which would deliver a bitter blow to Marine Le Pen, an exit poll by Ipsos suggested the NFP coalition will obtain between 172 and 192 seats.

The Macron-backing Ensemble group would take second place with between 150 and 170 seats, while National Rally would secure 132 to 152 seats.