PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron's 14-month-old party appears set to win a huge majority in parliamentary elections Sunday, meeting one of his most emblematic campaign promises: to bring new faces into politics.
Like Macron himself, they have never been previously elected and yet are expected to crush other contenders from traditional parties.
Sunday, 513 candidates will compete under the party banner for the 577 seats in the National Assembly, France's lower house of Parliament, in the second round of the two-part legislative elections.
Observers stressed that Macron's success and the low turnout rate of less than 50 percent last Sunday show the disaffection of French voters from traditional politics.
Mireille Robert, 55, heads a primary school in a village in the Aude region, in southwestern France. She decided to get into politics under Macron's banner and was chosen among 19,000 people who applied to seek a legislative seat.
Another supporter of Macron, Laetitia Avia, a 31-year-old lawyer, won almost 40 percent of the votes in her Paris district last Sunday, eliminating from the race a well-known Socialist contender who used to be vice president of the National Assembly.
Macron's movement was comfortably leading after last Sunday's first round, with more than 32 percent of the vote.
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