French Going to Polls in First Round of Parliamentary Balloting

French citizens, obviously bored by a listless campaign, vote today in the first round of parliamentary elections that determine whether newly reelected President Francois Mitterrand will govern with a Socialist majority in the National Assembly.

All polls indicate that Mitterrand’s Socialist Party, now in the minority in the National Assembly, will win a majority of the 577 seats after the second and final round June 12--perhaps one of the largest majorities in French history. In an ironic turn, however, the polls also indicate that the public does not want the Socialists to run the government all alone.

The conservative coalition that now holds a slight majority in the assembly is not campaigning as if there is any hope of keeping it. The battle cry is, more or less, “Let’s limit our losses.”

To do so, the various conservative factions have united under the coalition title Union of the Rally and of the Center to present a single candidate in almost every district.

After going through a frenzied presidential election campaign, which ended with the 71-year-old Mitterrand’s decisive victory May 8, French politicians appeared reluctant to stage mass campaign rallies again, either out of fatigue or out of fear of annoying their jaded voters.

Politicians who drew rallies of 40,000 to 50,000 during the presidential campaign could count themselves lucky so far if they draw 2,000 in their few appearances during the parliamentary campaign.

Jacques Chirac, for example, the former premier who was defeated by Mitterrand in the second round of the presidential election, spoke at one rally in Grenoble near the Alps resorts but attracted only 1,500 in an ice skating rink that could seat 5,000.

Much of the national attention has focused on a single district in a single city: the eighth constituency in Marseilles. There, extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who shocked the nation by winning 14.39% of the national vote in the first round of the presidential election, is running for the assembly.

At first, Marseilles, with its poverty and resentment against the growing number and presence of immigrants, appeared a wise choice for the burly, one-eyed former paratrooper who powered his way into national politics with diatribes against North Africans and other immigrants.

In the first round of voting last April 24, Le Pen led all nine presidential candidates in Marseilles with 28.34% of the vote.

But interest in Le Pen is evidently declining. Polls indicate that he may lose in Marseilles to the son of a longtime Socialist leader and that his party, the National Front, may be completely shut out of the National Assembly.

Much depends on whether Le Pen is able to persuade the conservative coalition to deal and trade with him for seats after the first round. The National Front won 35 seats in the 1986 parliamentary elections because of proportional representation. But that system was dropped after one election.

Under the electoral system in use today, a candidate must take at least 51% of the vote in the first round to win election as a deputy. If no one wins a majority, all candidates with votes from more than 12.5% of registered voters (usually about 20% of the vote) have the right to advance to the second round on the next Sunday. Victory in that round in each district goes to the candidate with the most votes even if less than a majority.

The system lends itself to a good deal of dealing between rounds. Le Pen wants some kind of understanding with the conservatives. Under it, his candidates would withdraw in favor of the conservative candidates in some districts if the conservatives would withdraw in favor of the National Front in other districts.

That could be tempting to the conservatives in some local districts but could prove disastrous nationally if it looked like the conservatives were embracing the extreme right.