French politicians surprised by swing to the left as parliamentary polls close — as it happened

That's all from us for now, as the latest polls continue to show the leftist New Popular Front (NFP)  in the lead.

Thank you for joining us today!

You can look back at the developments below, or download the ABC News app and subscribe to our range of news alerts for the latest updates.

One last word from a political analyst before we leave you today.

Nicholas Tenzer, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, argues France still faces an uncertain future.

"We have no majority in the house and basically it means the left parties and the centrist parties from Macron's side will have to build a kind of coalition," he tells The World Today.

"They will have to build a compromise between them which is certainly not an easy thing.

"But basically that's the only way out."

 Listen to more below:

We're set to head off shortly, but here's the current seat numbers, according to France TV.

• Leftist New Popular Front (NFP): 180 seats 
• Centrist Ensemble coalition: 158 seats 
• Far-right National Rally (RN): 143 seats 

Around two thirds of registered voters showed up to the voting centres – the largest turnout for decades.

But there's still no definitive majority in the 577-seat assembly, meaning the various parties will now have to do deals to work out who is the next prime minister.

That’s the question that everyone is asking.

Convention dictates that Mr Macron must name someone from the left to be prime minister.

But he and his liberal bloc don’t want that leader to be Jean-Luc Mélenchon or someone from his France Unbowed party.

But France Unbowed won the most votes among the left-of-centre New Popular Front Coalition.

So it would appear to have the right to insist on its candidate becoming prime minister. Could that be Mr Mélenchon?

Instead, it's likely Mr Macron will be hoping that NFP doesn’t put forward the self-described leftwing populist. 

Mr Macron would prefer to work with a coalition led by a centre-left force.

He’s done this in the past, himself serving under François Hollande before moving into the Élysée Palace in 2017.

But would Mr Mélenchon be prepared to support someone else’s government?

We'll have to wait and see.

Here's two maps from public broadcaster France TV.

They show who won by district in the two rounds of the election.

The New Popular Front and other leftists are coloured in red and pink.

Emmanuel Macron's centrist coalition is marked in purple.

 And the centre-right Republicans are marked in a lighter shade of blue than the far-right National Rally.

What a difference the week between the two rounds have made!

In the first round, with a few exceptions (like the overseas territories), the National Rally captured basically everywhere outside of the cities and their surroundings.

But in the second round, the liberal centre received an "assist" from the left to win much of central France.

And the left won more urban and semi-urban areas than in in the first round.

Here's what leftist supporters are feeling tonight (though it's more like early morning there now!)

Socialist supporter Vincent, 24, said the results gave the country hope.

"For weeks, the media and polls have been telling us that the National Rally would win a majority, would be in the lead, and the country has shown that no, it is the left that has the majority," he said.

"It's a huge victory and tonight, we are delighted, it makes us feel good and we are happy with these results." 

Teacher and migrant aid volunteer Patrick Jezequel, 24, said RN seemed to have thought "they have already won".

"There was this real upsurge throughout the country, which still shows that there are forces that are able to mobilise," he said.

"The turnout increased, and so we won. It is a very good thing."

  The French press has largely welcomed the outcome of this election – with few RN supporters among mainstream titles.

Leftist Liberation celebrates the win of the left, saying its leaders "hadn't dare to dream" of a result like this one during 28 sleepless nights since Emmanuel Macron dissolved the assembly.

"C'est ouf" the paper says, French slang that translates along the lines of"It's crazy".

 The paper also echoes incumbent PM Attal, who says France has now entered a "new era" when three blocs on the left, right and centre compete for power.

Liberal business paper Les Echos ran a front page showing a grim-faced Mr Bardella with the headline "the slap".

 The news outlet says Mr Macron is likely to wait and see what the final make-up of the assembly is, and what the various parties on the Left say before deciding what to do next.

The French president hasn't spoken publicly, but he's appealing to his centre to remain "cautious", despite his coalition's better-than-expected results.

"Unprecedented" is also the word that conservative Le Figaro uses to characterise the outcome of this vote.

But it cautions that the winning leftist New Popular Front may have trouble putting together a workable majority in parliament – and could soon face no confidence motions, with Mr Macron's centrist parties still in the game and able to frustrate the Front in the assembly.

Here's some more reactions from across the globe including from a unnamed EU official who spoke to Reuters, calling the outcome a "huge relief".

"What it means for Europe on a day-to-day basis remains to be seen though," they added.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez:

Mr Sanchez congratulated NFP for a victory that "stops the far-right from reaching the government".

Greece's Socialist PASOK party head Nikos Androulakis:

Mr Androulakis said the French had "raised a wall against the far right, racism and intolerance and guarded the timeless principles of the French Republic: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity."

Colombian President Gustavo Petro:

"There are battles that last just a few days but (which) define humanity's fate.

"France has gone through one of these." 

Reporting with Reuters 

That would be uncharted territory for France.

The constitution says President Emmanuel Macron cannot call new parliamentary elections for another 12 months.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal says he would tender his resignation to Mr Macron on Monday morning local time, but that he was available to act in a caretaker capacity.

The constitution says Mr Macron decides who to ask to form a government. But whoever he picks faces a confidence vote in the National Assembly, which will convene for 15 days on July 18.

 This means Mr Macron needs to name someone acceptable to a majority of politicians.

Mr Macron will likely be hoping to peel off Socialists and Greens from the leftist alliance, isolating France Unbowed, to form a centre-left coalition with his own bloc.

However, there was no sign of an imminent break-up of the New Popular Front at this stage.

Another possibility is a government of technocrats that would manage day-to-day affairs but not oversee structural changes.

It was not clear the left-wing bloc would support this scenario, which would still require the backing of parliament.

Reporting by Reuters.

This is far from certain.

France is not accustomed to the kind of post-election coalition-building that is common in northern European parliamentary democracies like Germany or the Netherlands.

Its Fifth Republic was designed in 1958 by war hero Charles de Gaulle to give large, stable parliamentary majorities to presidents and that has created a confrontational political culture with no tradition of consensus and compromises.

Moderate left wing politician Raphaël Glucksmann  said the political class would have to "act like grown ups".

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), ruled out a broad coalition of parties of different stripes.

He said Mr Macron had a duty to call on the leftist alliance to rule.

In the centrist camp, Macron's party head, Stéphane Séjourné, said he was ready to work with mainstream parties but ruled out any deal with Mt Mélenchon's LFI.

Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe also ruled out any deal with the hard-left party.

Mr Macron himself said he will wait for the new assembly to have found some "structure" to decide his next move.

Reporting by Reuters.

One of the names now swirling around for prime minister is far-left party France Unbowed's (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Already, Mr Mélenchon has said current PM Gabriel Attal "must go."

Mr Mélenchon has run for president three times; in 2012, 2017, and 2022.

He's also known for his more radical ideas, including his anti-Americanism, support of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and vocal opposition of the EU.

He's also adopted more traditionally left-wing ideologies including increased labour rights and the expansion of French welfare programmes.

Of course, this is all happening a few weeks before the Paris Olympics begin.

And, due to today's close result, it seems likely that the Games will be accompanied by political jousting and backflips, as the leaders try to agree on who should form government.

So, when Gabriel Attal announced his pending resignation as prime minister earlier, he signalled that he would be staying "as long as duty demands it", especially given that the Olympics are just over a fortnight away.

Although he lost, Attal presented himself as satisfied by the fact that his liberal centre didn't entirely "disappear" after this parliamentary poll:

"Neither extreme has captured a majority this evening," he said in his resignation speech:

Nearly three million French people abroad were also called to vote in these elections.  That's almost 5 per cent of the population!

That's because France still has a lot of overseas territories.

This doesn't just include New Caledonia and French Polynesia in the Pacific, France also has controls areas of the Caribbean.

And there's also French Guyana in South America, which hosts one of the busiest spaceports in the world.

Aside from the voters in the French overseas territories, there are districts representing French citizens elsewhere in the world.

The 11th district is the largest of these.

It includes Eastern Europe, most of Asia and Oceania including Australia, but excluding New Caledonis, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.

It also has the least registered voters of any of the overseas seats.

Here, the run-off was between the centre’s Anne Genetet and the left’s Franck Pajot — the National Rally didn’t make it through to the second round.

Genetet has claimed victory in the seat with 57 per cent of the vote.

Australian National University's Romain Fathi, who is in France, has told ABC News anyone who knows the French political system would know that this isn't surprising.

"Although there have been a lot of people voting for the far right, it doesn't quite translate in seats of MPs in the assembly.

"It may not seem really democratic from an Australian standpoint but that is how the system has been designed."

You can watch the full interview below:

There’s no clear winner from these elections – but there’s a relative loser, the National Rally (RN).

Initial projections after the first round appeared to show RN was near to winning an absolute majority.

So to stop them, the other parties from the centre and the left effectively ganged up on the far right using maths.

Under French electoral law, a candidate who scores more than 12.5 per cent of registered voters makes it through to the second round.

In most electorates, at least three candidates — from the far right, the centre, and the left — advanced.

With all of them in the race, mathematics favoured the far right, with the left's and the centre's vote not distant from one another.

But if the third-placed candidate dropped out, the arithmetic favours the "anyone but Le Pen" vote.

That meant the second-place candidate from the first round would win the seat — so leftists or centrists respectively.

And it's exactly what happened tonight, with hundreds of second-place candidates from the left and the centre dropping out.

That, plus record turnout, kept the far right from repeating its strong performance in the EU elections and the first round.

If there's one clip that sums up the shock swing tonight, it's this one below from BFM TV.

 As early exit polls showed a surprise win for the left-wing New Popular Front and a third-place finish for the far right, supporters for both blocs watch on.

Reporting by ABC Pacific Local Journalism Network’s Nick Sas

 A significant result in tonight's election has also been recorded closer to home in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia.

For the first time in 38 years, New Caledonia has elected an indigenous Kanak candidate into the French National Assembly, just months after deadly riots swept through the French Pacific territory.

 Emmanuel Tjibaou, the son of a well-known Kanak independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989, won one of two New Caledonia-based seats up for grabs.

French loyalist candidate Nicholas Metzdorf won the other seat.

 The election of Mr Tjibaou is significant, as New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population continues to push for independence from France.

Riots broke out in the capital Noumea and across the country in May, after Mr Macron attempted to amend the French constitution and change voting lists in New Caledonia, which Indigenous Kanaks feared would further marginalise them and solidify French control of the territory.

Early results indicate Kanak candidates gained almost 10,000 more votes than French loyalist candidates

It is unclear how— or if —the new left coalition in France will act on New Caledonia.

It's been a mixed response overseas.

Here's some of the early reactions.

Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi:

"The reformist center has been decisive today in France as in the United Kingdom a few days ago.

"A sign of hope for European politics.

"Now let's see what government will be born but in the meantime Macron has won the first match."

Foreign Policy spokesperson for the Social Democratic Party of Germany Nils Schmid: 

"The worst has been avoided… The president is politically weakened, even if he retains a central role in view of the unclear majority situation.

"Forming a government will be complicated."

Portugal's far-right party leader Andre Ventura: 

"Disaster for the economy, tragedy in immigration and bad in the fight against corruption.

"If these results are confirmed in France, it would be a real collapse for Europe!"

Polish PM Donald Tusk flagged this a little but among the unhappy tonight may be Russian president Vladimir Putin. 

There's already clear indications Russia had chosen a frontrunner for this election.

The Russia foreign ministry posted a photo of RN's Marine Le Pen on social media platform X last Wednesday, indicating their support for the far-right party.

"The people of France are seeking a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national interests & a break from the dictate of Washington & Brussels," Russia foreign ministry deputy spokesman Andrei Nastasin said.

Opponents have previously accused RN of being too soft on Russia, though Mr Bardella has sought to reassure his support base of his commitment to continuing France's relationship with Ukraine.