Paris — French voters on returned to the polls on Sunday for the second round of a parliamentary election, which President Emmanuel Macron’s youthful party is tipped to win by a landslide, completing his reset of national politics. The assembly is set to be transformed with a new generation of legislators — younger, more female and more ethnically diverse — winning seats in the afterglow of Macron’s success in last month’s presidential election. Macron’s Republique en Marche (Republic on the Move, REM) and its allies are forecast to take 400-470 seats in the 577-member parliament, one of the biggest post-war majorities that would give the pro-EU president a free hand to implement his business-friendly programme. The scale of the change is forecast to be so large that some observers have compared the overhaul to 1958, the start of the present presidential system, or even the post-war rebirth of French democracy in 1945. It is also entirely unexpected: Macron was unknown three years a...
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