French Voter Turnout Low as Macron Expects Big Majority

Voters turned out in low numbers on Sunday in the second round of France's parliamentary election, where President Emmanuel Macron is expected to win a landslide majority that should allow him to embark on far-reaching pro-business reforms.

The vote comes just a month after the 39-year-old former banker became the youngest head of state in modern French history, promising to clean up French politics and revive the euro zone's second-biggest economy.

Macron's neoliberal En Marche party, known by its acronym LREM, is little more than a year old, yet pollsters project it will win as many as 75 to 80 percent of the seats in the 577-seat lower house.

Turnout, though, was on course for a record low, a sign of voter fatigue after seven months of campaigning and voting — and also of disillusionment and anger with politics.

Interior Ministry data showed turnout reached 17.75 percent by 12:00 p.m. local time, its lowest ever at that time of day for a second round of parliamentary elections since at least 1997.

Polls show Macron is on course to win the biggest parliamentary majority since de Charles de Gaulle's conservatives in 1968.