FRANCE: Marine Le Pen Elected To Parliament But Her Far-Right National Front Party Wins Only Eight Seats

France 24 reports:

France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen won a seat in parliament for the first time on Sunday, but it was a bittersweet victory that masked an underwhelming election cycle for her National Front (FN) party.

The feisty 48-year-old, who lost by a 20-point margin to Emmanuel Macron in May’s presidential run-off, won handily in her northern fiefdom of Hénin-Beaumont, a depressed former mining town, with 58.6 percent of the vote.

But her anti-EU, anti-immigration FN failed to capitalise on the populist wave that helped propel Donald Trump to the US presidency and spurred Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Le Pen’s party won eight seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, dashing her one-time hopes of emerging as the main opposition to Macron’s La République en Marche! (LREM) party.

Updated French parliamentary results. Macron’s LRM: 359/577 seats; big but not crushing majority. Le Pen + Mélenchon elected; Philippot not pic.twitter.com/qRDIVQqtPM

— Sophie Pedder (@PedderSophie) June 19, 2017