First result projections are due immediately after the close of polling at 2000 GMT and Election Notes will have the returns live, via La Monde . The message in today's final round of voting could be blunter still. The Daily Telegraph on 1 June reported that the Left is confident of victory and remain favorites. But with one in three voters abstaining in the first round, the Right have the potential to swing the balance at the last minute. If France votes as expected and elects a Socialist-Communist majority to the National Assembly, Europe will probably be even more stupefied than M Jospin imagines.
French law prohibits the publication of opinion polls in the final week before parliamentary votes.
But this year news media have been ignoring the ban, in large part because the polls are already available by computer. It is not illegal to conduct opinion polls during elections, but it is outlawed to publish them. So when unidentified users put polls on the Internet, other outlets declared the 1977 law unenforceable. Reuters on 29 May reported that voters here were scheduled to go to the polls Sunday in municipal elections. PanAfrican News Agency on 31 May reported that Algerians living abroad, apart from those in France, started voting Saturday for representatives to the People's National Assembly.