Preparations for French election second round enter final hours as polling stations set up

(6 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Livry Gargan, France - 6 July 2024
1. Various of workers setting up polling station barriers and signs
2. Various of workers putting together polling booths
3. Various of polling station interior
STORYLINE:
Workers in the French commune of Livry-Gargan, near Paris, were setting up polling stations on Saturday in preparation for the second round of legislative elections on Sunday.
French President Emmanuel Macron could awake - if he has slept at all - with clipped wings on Monday morning.
The high-stakes second round of the legislative election on Sunday will almost certainly impact the French leader's sway in the areas of defense and foreign affairs.
It could diminish his role as an energetic and influential figure in European and world affairs and as one of Ukraine's primary backers in the war against Russia, say retired French military officers and analysts of France's defense and foreign policies.
After the centrist president's bloc finished a distant third, behind the surging far right, in last weekend's first round of voting for a new parliament, one of the only certainties before Sunday's decisive round two is that Macron himself can't emerge strengthened.
With many of its candidates already out of the race, Macron's camp can't secure the absolute majority that gave him ample maneuvering room in his first term as president from 2017.
It also is likely to fall well short of the 245 seats it won after his reelection in 2022.
That made it the largest single group - albeit without a clear majority - in the outgoing National Assembly that Macron dissolved on June 9, triggering the surprise election after the far right handed his alliance a painful beating in French voting for the European Parliament.
AP video shot by Nicolas Garriga
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