Chirac set for biggest majority in 44 years

President Jacques Chirac's centre-right appears assured of an overwhelming victory in the second round of French parliamentary elections today.

With many left-wing voters unlikely to turn out, Mr Chirac's new party, the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle, is forecast to win up to 400 of the 577 seats in the national assembly.

This would be an extraordinary outcome for a party born – or bolted together from three other parties – only six weeks ago. It would also be an extraordinary end to an eight-week season of two elections and four election days.

In the first round of the presidential election on 21 April, President Chirac, enfeebled by allegations of corruption, was rejected by four out of five French voters. He and his Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, now look likely to win the largest majority of a single party in the 44-year history of the Fifth Republic.

After three bouts and nine years of left-right power sharing, or cohabitation, since 1986, and a long, tangled history of small and medium parties, France seems to be destined for five years of political clarity and centre-right domination.

With more than 43 per cent of the vote, they were the clear victors in the first round of the parliamentary elections last week. Many left-wing voters – and more surprisingly, many far-right voters – did not bother to cast their ballots. How long the clarity will last is open to question. Even some senior figures on the centre-right are worried that too large a majority will invite the kind of faction fighting and personal manouevering which has always bedevilled the right wing of French politics.

Mr Chirac's UMP was created in response to – or to take advantage of – the crisis created in April and early May by the success of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election. Many grassroots members of its three component parties, even members of Mr Chirac's own neo-Gaullist RPR, are angry that the formations they supported are being merged from above.

To them, this seems to be an odd way to fulfill Mr Chirac's and Mr Raffarin's promise to break through the traditional Parisian-centred vision of politics and pay more attention to La France d'en bas (the France below).

Blood-letting on the left can also be expected after today. The new Socialist leader, François Hollande, is not sure of winning his seat in Tulle in Corrèze – which would almost certainly provoke a leadership struggle. The Communist and Green leaders, Robert Hue and Dominique Voynet, are also in trouble.