New French President Emmanuel Macron is on track to consolidate his power in the National Assembly elections, which will be completed after a second round of voting Sunday. Macron's year-old En Marche! movement is expected to win as many as 470 of 577 seats in France's lower house of Parliament, an even more remarkable majority than the 400 seats the president's party was initially predicted to take.
This means heavy losses for the right-wing Republicans and the Socialists, previously the heavy hitters of French politics. "What is extraordinary is the speed with which it's happened," Sudhir Hazareesingh, an Oxford University professor of French politics, told The Washington Post. "What's also extraordinary is that both traditional parties are being swept away."
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