PARIS, June 30 (BBC): France is voting in a parliamentary election that could make history, with the far right closer to power than it has ever been in modern times.
The National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella is well ahead in the polls - three weeks to the day since they won European elections. President Emmanuel Macron reacted immediately by calling a national vote and stunning his country.
A high turnout is expected among 49 million voters for such a pivotal election and polls close in the big cities at 20:00 (18:00GMT), when the first exit polls come out.
This is a two-round election, and most of the National Assembly's 577 seats will not be decided until the second-round run-off vote next Sunday.
The campaign only lasted 20 days, and that also benefited RN, which quickly refined its existing promises on immigration, crime and insecurity as well as tax cuts to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
Jordan Bardella wants to be RN's first prime minister, and his party is confident of winning dozens of constituencies outright in the first round. But he says he will only take the job if the party secures an absolute parliamentary majority of 289 seats. The alternative would be a hung parliament and stalemate.
As soon as the first results come in on Sunday evening, National Rally's opponents will have to decide who to back in run-off battles across France, in a bid to ensure that absolute majority does not happen.
If the polls are right, many of the run-offs will pit the National Rally against a hastily cobbled together left-wing alliance called New Popular Front, which believes it could even win the election.
But because of the expected high turnout, three parties could qualify for the second-round battles in as many as 250 constituencies, according to Brice Teinturier of Ipsos polling institute.
In previous elections, parties from across the spectrum have united to keep the far right out. That raises the question of whether one of the candidates will drop out in those triangular races to unify the anti-RN vote.
RN's leaders have worked hard for years to shed their extremist image. Alongside policies for giving French citizens "national preference" for jobs and housing, they want to cut VAT on energy and allow under-30s to escape income tax.
In Franconville, north of Paris, a teacher called Agnès complains about the breakdown of discipline in French schools and likes Jordan Bardella's plans for "a big bang in authority" in education. "I'll either vote right or far right. I like Bardella's charisma," she says.
She also has no problem with RN's plans to abolish droit du sol, the right to automatic French citizenship for children born to foreign parents if those children have spent five years in France - from the age of 11 to 18 when they are entitled to a apply for French citizenship.
President Macron's Ensemble alliance is widely expected to haemorrhage seats, and Gabriel Attal's days as prime minister appear numbered, even though polls suggest he remains the most popular politician in France.
"The Macron era is over," François Hollande declared ahead of the vote.
Mr Hollande, the former French president who was Mr Macron's boss and mentor, is standing for parliament again - now as a New Popular Front candidate.
However, even Macron allies are angry with his snap election gamble.
France was not due another election for three more years, and it had far better ways of spending the summer than going through an abbreviated and intense election campaign.
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