Macron's party set for huge French parliamentary majority

The vote delivered a further crushing blow to the Socialist and conservative parties that had alternated in power for decades until Macron's election in May blew apart the left-right divide.

With 90 percent of voters accounted for, Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) and Modem allies had won 31.9 percent support, Interior Ministry results showed.

The conservative party The Republicans and allied center-right Union of Democrats and Independents held 18.9 percent, the National Front 13.8 percent and the Socialists 7.45 percent.

Pollsters project Macron's alliance could win as many as three-quarters of the seats in the lower house after next week's second round of voting.

That would give France's youngest leader since Napoleon a powerful mandate to make good on campaign pledges to revive France's fortunes by cleaning up politics and easing regulations that investors say hobble the euro zone's second-biggest economy.

"France is back," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on French TV. "Next Sunday, the National Assembly will embody the new face of our republic."

Voter turnout was a record low for parliamentary elections in the post-war Fifth Republic at 48.6 percent, taking the shine off Macron's margin of victory in the first round.

Both the Socialists and the conservative Republicans urged more voters to cast their ballots in the June 18 second round, warning them against allowing too much power to be concentrated in the hands of one party.

Macron professes to be of neither right nor left. His one-year-old LREM party fielded both seasoned veterans and political novices including a former bullfighter, a fighter pilot and a former armed police commander.

"It's a renewal of the political class," said Jose Jeffrey, a Health Ministry administrator who voted LREM.

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