By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, June 17 — The conservative party of President Nicolas Sarkozy won a solid victory in French parliamentary elections on Sunday, but it failed to secure the rout of the left that polls had predicted.
In a sign that the left is still alive in France, three polling institutes estimated late Sunday night that Mr. Sarkozy’s governing Union for a Popular Movement would win between 314 to 328 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. The polling groups projected that the Socialists would win between 206 to 212 seats.
That outcome reflected a net gain of seats for the left and a net loss for the right. Mr. Sarkozy’s party had 359 seats in the outgoing Parliament, while the Socialists had 149.
In the most high-stakes contest, Alain Juppé, Mr. Sarkozy’s minister of a new high-profile ministry for the environment, transportation and energy and the mayor of Bordeaux, lost to a Socialist. He announced that he will step down as minister, a humiliating setback for the Sarkozy government.
In a less important but symbolic defeat for the governing party, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who as France’s leading antiterrorist investigative magistrate earned a global reputation over the years, also lost to a Socialist. ...
Carl
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