Exit polls show France's conservatives take control of parliament

PARIS -- Exit polls showed French Socialists had lost control of the nation's parliament on Sunday, with the mainstream right winning a landslide election that would give conservative President Jacques Chirac more power than at any time in the last five years.\nChirac's Union for the Presidential Majority, a coalition of rightist parties, captured between 360 and 378 seats, winning control of the 577-seat National Assembly, France's lawmaking body, exit polls showed.\nThe Socialist Party won between 153 and 165 seats.\nAccording to exit polls, all conservative parties won from 385 to 399 seats. The left, including the Socialists, the Communists and the Green Party, won from 178 to 192 seats. The extreme right National Front failed to win any seats.\nControl of the National Assembly goes to the party or coalition with an absolute majority of 289 seats.\nVoter turnout was light throughout the day and appeared headed for a record low in France's 44-year-old Fifth Republic.\nThe swing toward the right in France was the latest tilt in that direction by voters across Europe. Conservative parties have also made gains in the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Portugal.\nThe Communists were in serious trouble, with party leader Robert Hue battling for his political life in a tough re-election battle for a seat from Val-d'Oise, north of Paris.\nThree hours before polls close turnout was 46.7 percent -- slightly worse than at the same time a week ago, when it was at 50.6 percent, the Interior Ministry reported. In the first round on June 9, turnout was about 65 percent, a record low for the first round of a legislative race under the Fifth Republic, established in 1958.\nIt was the fourth time in less than two months that the French have gone to the polls, including two rounds of the presidential race.\nThe head of Chirac's caretaker government, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said after casting his ballot in the small western town of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou that he felt victory was ahead.\n"The message from the French is clear: They want (their leaders) to take action," Raffarin said. "After this beautiful summer Sunday, it seems there's a lot of work waiting for me."\nRaffarin, who would lose his job if the left won, confidently released his schedule for the coming week, including a commemoration for the late Gen. Charles de Gaulle and a meeting with Spain's prime minister.\nThe extreme-right National Front was running in 37 legislative districts but appeared to end up with no seats because only the candidate with the most votes wins in each district.\nFront leader Jean-Marie Le Pen complained that the system was stacked against smaller parties.\n"We are the only country in which a party that arrived in second place in the presidential (race) and third place in the legislatives may have no deputies" in parliament, Le Pen said. The National Front currently has no seats in the legislature.\nLe Pen finished second to Chirac in the May 5 presidential runoff.\nIn the outgoing parliament, leftists held 314 seats and rightists 245, while five deputies were unaligned. Thirteen seats were empty.