Marine Le Pen faces a shock defeat at the hands of the far-Left and Emmanuel Macron, exit polls predicted, after French voters turned out in force to keep her and the hard-Right from power.

In a disappointing result for the National Rally (RN) leader, the New Popular Front, an uneasy alliance of centre-Left, green and hard-Left parties, was predicted to win the snap parliamentary election with between 172 and 192 seats.

It had vowed a “total break” with Mr Macron’s unpopular pensions and welfare reforms and its leaders called on the president to respect the results of the second round run-off, which point to France having a hung parliament three weeks before the Paris Olympics.

Mr Macron’s Ensemble (Together) alliance will win between 150 and 170 seats, confounding predictions of wipeout after he came third in the first round. RN will win between 132 and 152 seats and be third rather than the expected dominant force, according to the usually reliable exit polls.

RN was the clear winner in the first round of the vote called by Mr Macron after he was trounced by Ms Le Pen in June’s European elections but fell to third on Sunday, according to the poll.

Ms Le Pen had declared her party had “practically wiped out” Emmanuel Macron after winning the first round of voting on June 30.

Power will now move away from the Elysée Palace to the French parliament as Mr Macron enters a period of “cohabitation” with a prime minister very likely to be from the Left, which will leave him confined to a far lesser role, in charge of foreign and defence affairs.

RN was the clear winner in the first round of the vote called by Mr Macron after he was trounced by Ms Le Pen in June’s European elections but fell to third on Sunday, according to the poll.

Ms Le Pen had declared her party had “practically wiped out” Emmanuel Macron after winning the first round of voting on June 30.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard-Left leader of France Unbowed party, was the dominant force in the victorious New Popular Front. hailed a “result which was claimed to be impossible”.

“We were able to push the threat away. The National Rally is far from having the absolute majority that seemed to be within reach a couple of weeks ago,” the divisive firebrand said.

Mr Mélenchon demanded the scalp of Mr Macron’s prime minister Gabriel Attal and declared he would not be prepared to negotiate a parliamentary alliance with the French president. He said New Popular Front’s manifesto, which repeals crackdowns on migration and several of Macron’s flagship reforms.

Commentators suggested that was a warning to his centre-Left allies, the Socialist Party, not to strike any deal with Mr Macron, who enraged the Left by raising the retirement age to 64.

“France deserves better than the choice between neoliberalism and fascism,” said Olivier Faure, of the Socialist party as he called for the ditching of Mr Macron’s reforms on welfare and retirement.

Mr Macron will hope to split the Socialists from France Unbowed and build a new majority but that is by no means certain. The first question is who will be France’s next prime minister and how long their government can survive in the new National Assembly where no party has an absolute majority.

Turnout was the highest since 1981, reaching 60 per cent by 5pm when François Mitterrand was elected president.

Some hailed this as a return of the “Republican Front” first forged when Ms Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie faced Jacques Chirac in the run-off of the 2002 presidential elections and lost.

The IPSOS-Talon projections suggest that a concerted bid by Left-wing and pro-Macron centrists to forge tactical anti-RN voting pacts in more than 200 constituencies paid off.

Mr Bardella said, “In spite of it all this has been a major breakthrough for the National Rally”.

He said “improbable alliances” and “unnatural arrangements” between the Left and Mr Macron had “plunged France into the arms” of Mr Mélenchon.

While many remain flummoxed as to why Mr Macron chose to call snap elections after losing to the RN in European elections, he insisted afterwards that his aim was to “clarify” French politics, which they say he hopes will eventually leave three clear camps of hard Right, centre and hard Left.

Against all expectations, it appears his gamble ultimately paid off, although he has been left a lame duck in deadlocked France for the final three years of his term.

Mr Macron cannot dissolve parliament for another year.

Tensions were high before the exit polls were released. From Paris to Nantes, Lyon and Marseille, shopkeepers in major cities on Sunday boarded up shop windows in anticipation of protests and riots following the results.

In Paris, police warned local businesses along the busy retail strip of Rue de Rivoli to board up their windows in the event of election unrest and outbreaks of violence. Some shopkeepers had boarded up their windows ahead of the first round of voting on June 30 and never took them down.

Interior minister Gérald Darmanin mobilised 30,000 police and gendarmes across France, including 5,000 in Paris alone for the runoff vote. Authorities said they feared violent outbreaks from both far-Left and far-Right extremists.

The Elysée Palace said Mr Macron would wait for the “structuring” of the new Assembly before “taking the necessary decisions”, including over the next prime minister.