Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally party and its allies received 33 per cent of the popular vote in the first round of France's parliamentary elections, the interior ministry confirmed on Monday morning.
The New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition of parties formed just this month, came in second with 28 per cent, while President Emmanuel Macron's centrist bloc received 20 per cent, the ministry said.
The results were in line with exit polls, which predicted National Rally would receive about 34 per cent of the vote, and mean France is the closest it has been to having a far-right government since World War II.
The results also indicate Mr Macron's decision to call voters back to the polls for the second time in three weeks appeared to have backfired.
He called the snap poll after his party lost out to Ms Le Pen's National Rally in the European Parliamentary elections last month.
Speaking after the release of exit polls on Sunday evening, Ms Le Pen said Mr Macron's camp has been "almost wiped out".
Addressing a jubilant crowd waving French tricolour flags of blue, white and red, Ms Le Pen called on her supporters and voters that didn't back her party in the first round to push it over the line and give it a commanding legislative majority.
In that scenario, Ms Le Pen's 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, would become prime minister.
Mr Macron, who has said he will not step down before his term expires in 2027, would be forced into an awkward power-sharing arrangement called "cohabitation" in France.
Speaking on Sunday evening, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said not one single vote should go to the National Rally in the second round.
"The stakes are clear: to prevent the National Rally from having an absolute majority," he said after it became clear his and Mr Macron's party was due to finish third.
Mr Attal also announced his government would suspend its implementation of an unpopular reform which would have reduced unemployment benefits.
The euro rose on the back of the result, which saw National Rally perform well but fall slightly short of the vote share predicted in some early polls.
"They have actually performed a little bit worse than what was expected," said Carol Kong, a currency strategist at the Commonwealth Bank.
"As a result of that, we saw the euro rise modestly in early Asian trade, just because we might actually get less fears of more expansionary and unsustainable fiscal policy if the far-right party did a little bit worse."
Three-way run-offs could favour Le Pen
Election for France's 577-seat National Assembly are held over two rounds.
The seats in which no candidate receives 50 per cent of the vote in the first round go on to a second round, featuring the top two candidates as well as any others who received more than 12.5 per cent.
Whoever wins the most votes in the second round wins the seat.
The high turnout on Sunday means about 300 seats are now facing potential three-way run-offs, which could advantage the National Rally.
To prevent this, France's centre-right and centre-left politicians have long practised what they call a "republican front", whereby the third-placed candidate drops out of the race and urges voters to rally behind the second-placed candidate.
All candidates through to the run-off have until Tuesday evening to decide whether to stand down or run in the second round.
Reuters/ABC
