France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party holds a clear lead in irst round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections as per exit polls.

Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe projected Marine Le Pen’s RN winning about 34 percent of votes, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition was seen coming in second with about 29 percent, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance in third spot with about 20.3 percent, reports Al Jazeera.

Pollster Elabe said in an estimate for BFM TV that the RN and its allies could win 260-310 parliament seats in the second voting round on July 7, while Ipsos projected a range of 230-280 seats for RN and its allies in a poll for France Television.

A total of 289 seats are needed for an absolute majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament. Le Pen welcomed the results and told a celebratory crowd that the French people have placed the RN in front, and that they have practically wiped out Macron’s camp. RN President Jordan Bardella pointed out that next Sunday’s second round will be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic”.

He reiterated that Macron’s party has been wiped out and accused the far left of creating an “existential crisis” representing “a real danger to France and all the French people”.

Reporting from Bardella’s campaign headquarters in France, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said the results are significant for the far-right RN party but that does not give them the overall majority they hoped for.