High-stakes French legislative election hits torrid final stretch before first-round voting begins

PARIS (AP) — With their own and France's fates in the balance, candidates were making their last campaign pushes Friday for the first round of voting in a pivotal and polarizing legislative election in which the centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron risks a potentially fatal beating at the hands of the surging far right.

With pollsters indicating that the anti-immigration National Rally could greatly increase its number of lawmakers in the National Assembly, the election could radically alter the trajectory of the European Union's largest country and hamstring Macron — who has been a driving force in EU decision-making — for the remainder of his second and last presidential term.

A far-right victory, coming on the heels of its surge in French voting for the European Parliament this month, risks saddling the president with a National Rally prime minister, Jordan Bardella. That would take the EU's second-largest economy into unchartered territory because the two men's plans for France's future are so sharply opposed and a power-sharing forced marriage between them could be conflictual and divisive.

Bardella, a 28-year-old protege of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and with no governing experience, says he would use the powers of prime minister to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. He cites fears that their ability to strike targets in Russia could suck nuclear-armed France into direct confrontation with the nuclear-armed government in Moscow.

But France's two-round system of voting — the initial balloting on Sunday will thin the field for decisive follow-up voting on July 7 — means the election's ultimate outcome is very uncertain. That allowed National Rally opponents to believe as they canvassed for votes that they could still lay the...