How the far-right went from 1st to 3rd in France's election
National Rally (RN) has suffered a stinging defeat in the run-off round of France's parliamentary elections, hobbled by electoral pacts between the left and President Emmanuel Macron's centrists.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella's RN led the first round of voting in the election on June 30 but fell back to third in Sunday's second round after the victorious left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) alliance and Macron's second-placed centrists joined forces to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.
The New Popular Front and its allies won 187 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, Macron's centrist group won 159 seats and the National Rally and its allies won 142 seats, interior ministry figures show.
All three blocs fell far short of the 289 seats required for an outright majority.
— 'Republican Front' -
The RN and its allies won 39 parliamentary seats in the first round of the election and topped the vote in 258 of the 501 constituencies that were still up for grabs in the second round.
But their first-round win was overturned by their rivals in two-thirds, or 109, of those constituencies after the third-placed left-wing or centrist candidate bowed out of the running to set up a duel between the RN candidate and its closest rival from a mainstream alliance.
The strategy of parties banding together across the political divide to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote has been regularly used since 2002, when Le Pen's father Jean-Marie faced Jacques Chirac in a presidential run-off.
On Sunday, it helped left-wing
