French President Jacques Chirac's conservative allies are set to win a commanding parliamentary majority in the runoff round of elections this weekend, according to an opinion poll published today.
The Ipsos poll indicated the centre-right Union for the Presidential Majority would take between 384 and 414 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.
|
|
Mr Jacques Chirac votes last Sunday
|
Their Socialist rivals were set to win 115 to 145 seats, and the Communist Party and Greens would together add no more than 27 seats to the left wing's tally in the lower house.
The centre-right won about 44 per cent of the vote in the first round of balloting last Sunday, while the Socialists and their partners scored a total of just under 37 per cent.
The Ipsos poll - carried out for the Le Figarodaily and Europe 1radio four days before Sunday's second round in the 198 constituencies where the result appears uncertain - showed that 53 per cent would vote for the right and 47 per cent for the left.
A similar between-round poll in the legislative elections of 1997, which brought the Socialists to power, gave the left 51 per cent and the right 49 per cent.
The survey found that Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's anti-immigration National Front, which failed last weekend to repeat the shock surge of its leader in April's presidential election, would win no seats in the lower house.