Landslide majority in sight for Macron

France is voting in the second round of parliamentary elections, in a run-off between the top candidates from the first round.

French President Emmanuel Macron

Opinion polls show that French voters will give President Emmanuel Macron a crushing majority. (AAP)

French voters are casting ballots in the second round of a parliamentary election whihc is expected to hand President Emmanuel Macron a landslide majority that should allow him to embark on deep social and economic reforms.

Sunday's vote comes just a month after the 39-year-old former banker became the youngest head of state in modern French history, promising to clean up French politics and revive the euro zone's second biggest economy.

Turnout, though, could touch record lows, in a sign of voter fatigue after seven months of campaigning and voting, but also of disillusionment and anger with politics that could eventually complicate Macron's reform drive.

Macron's centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party is barely more than a year old, yet pollsters project it will win as many as 75-80 per cent of seats in the 577-seat lower house.

"People know it's already a done deal," Alex Mpoy, a 38-year-old security guard told Reuters TV, echoing the apathy of many voters who intend to abstain.

Macron cast his vote early in the morning in the seaside resort of Le Touquet before flying to a ceremony outside Paris to mark the anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's 1940 appeal for French resistance to Nazi Germany's occupation.

Polls show Macron is on course to win the biggest parliamentary majority since that held by de Gaulle's own conservatives in 1968.

Many of Macron's MPs will be political novices, something which will change the face of parliament at the expense of the conservative and socialist parties that have ruled France for decades.

The conservative The Republicans are expected to be the biggest opposition group in parliament. But polls see them securing no more than 90-95 seats out of 577.

Polling stations close at 0200 AEST on Monday in small and medium towns and at 0400 AEST in Paris and other big cities.


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Source: AAP



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