French voters propel far-right National Rally to strong lead in 1st-round elections

abcnews.go.com:

French voters have propelled the far-right National Rally to a strong lead in first-round legislative elections and plunged the country into political uncertainty

PARIS — The far-right National Rally leaped into a strong lead Sunday in France's first round of legislative elections, polling agencies projected, bringing the party closer to being able to form a government in round two and dealing a major slap to centrist President Emmanuel Macron and his risky decision to call the surprise ballot.

When he dissolved the National Assembly on June 9, after a stinging defeat at the hands of the National Rally in French voting for the European Parliament, Macron gambled that the anti-immigration party with historical links to antisemitism wouldn't repeat that success when France's own fate was in the balance.

But it didn't work out that way. With French polling agencies projecting that the National Rally and its allies got about one-third of the national vote on Sunday, Macron's prime minister warned that France could end up with its first far-right government since World War II if voters don't come together to thwart that scenario in round two next Sunday.

“The extreme right is at the doors of power,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. He twice described National Rally policy pledges as “disastrous” and said that in the second-round ballot, “not one vote should go to the National Rally. France does not deserve that."

French polling agencies' projections put Macron’s grouping of centrist parties a distant third in the first-round ballot, behind both the National Rally and a new left-wing coalition of parties that joined forces to keep it from winning power.

Securing a parliamentary majority would enable National Rally leader