France heads to the polls on Sunday for a vote expected to cement the country's swing to the left by giving President Francois Hollande a clear parliamentary majority to push his agenda.
Opinion polls released before the end of campaigning at midnight Friday showed Hollande's Socialists and their parliamentary allies on track to take control of France's lower house National Assembly.
Hollande, who defeated rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy in May's presidential election, has urged voters to give him a majority as he seeks to steer France through Europe's debt crisis, rising unemployment and a faltering economy.
The French vote risks being overshadowed however by elections in Greece that could determine its future in the eurozone, amid concern over the shockwaves that a Greek euro exit would send through the global economy.
The polls showed France's Socialists winning between 287 and 330 seats in Sunday's run-off election -- almost certainly enough to secure a majority in the 577-seat Assembly.
French Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal, answers questions in her offices in La Rochelle. France heads to the polls on Sunday following a lacklustre campaign with the only major excitement an incendiary tweet fired off by the country's new unofficial first lady wishing luck to a candidate running against Royal, the president's ex-partner and mother of their four children
With polls showing the Greens, who are close allies of the Socialists and already in government, set to win up to 20 seats, Hollande is all but guaranteed to get the parliamentary backing he needs.
The Socialists and other left-wing parties came out on top in last Sunday's first round of the vote, winning 46 percent to 34 percent for Sarkozy's UMP party and its allies.
Pollsters predict the UMP and its allies will take between 210 and 263 seats in the run-off.
The vote will also be a key test for Marine Le Pen's anti-immigrant and anti-EU National Front (FN), which took 13.6 percent in the first round -- far above the four percent it won in the last parliamentary election in 2007.
Le Pen, who said the result confirmed her party's position as France's "third political force," is hoping the FN will be able to take a handful of seats including one for her in a rundown former mining constituency near the northern city of Lille.
Polls indicate the FN are set to win up to three seats, including for Le Pen and for Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the FN leader's 22-year-old niece, in the southern Vaucluse area.
After a hard-fought presidential race, the campaign for the parliamentary elections has been lacklustre, with the only major excitement generated by an incendiary tweet fired off by the country's new unofficial first lady.
The Twitter message by Hollande's companion Valerie Trierweiler wished good luck to Socialist dissident Olivier Falorni, who is running against Segolene Royal -- the president's ex-partner and mother of their four children -- in the western town of La Rochelle.
There has long been speculation of intense rivalry between Royal and Trierweiler. Hollande stood loyally by Royal as she battled Sarkozy for the presidency in the 2007 race, but he had reportedly been in a relationship since 2005 with Trierweiler, a twice-divorced 47-year-old mother of three.
The UMP said the tweet was an inappropriate intrusion of Hollande's personal life into politics, but analysts said that despite widespread media coverage it was unlikely the scandal would have much impact on the Socialists' result.