"We're seeing a kind of majority cohesion, it's democracy at work." While predicting the outcome can be tricky with 7,882 candidates vying for parliament's seats, even LREM's rivals have been saying they expect Macron to secure a majority. Their strategy has been to urge voters to make sure the opposition will be big enough to have some clout in parliament. "We shouldn't have a monopolistic party," former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, a Socialist, told Reuters. The survival of the Socialist Party, which ruled France for the past five years but is forecast to get just 15 to 30 seats, is at stake, as is the unity of The Republicans. Some key figures from both parties have rallied behind Macron. The National Front, reeling from a worse than expected score for chief Marine Le Pen in the presidential election, could miss its target to get enough lawmakers to form a parliamentary group. It is expected though to improve on the two deputies it had in the previous legislature. In a country with unemployment hovering near 10 percent and at risk of breaking its public deficit commitments, Macron was elected president in May on pledges to overhaul labor rules to make hiring and firing easier, cut corporate tax and invest billions in areas including job training and renewable energy. Macron also promised to clean up French politics after a string of scandals - a vow already tested by conflict of interest allegations against his former campaign chief Richard Ferrand, as well as reports that centrist ally Francois Bayrou's MoDem party used EU cash to fund Paris staff jobs. "I thought about voting for Macron but I didn't," said pensioner Jacqueline Laurent after casting her ballot in the eastern town of Annecy, close to the Swiss border. "With Ferrand and Bayrou we could see them falling back into the same old ways, so that was that.
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