The French far-right National Front (FN) party saw record gains in the first round of regional polls on Sunday, held under a state of emergency just three weeks after Islamic extremists killed 130 people in Paris.
Despite the strong result, it faces an uphill battle to clinch a run-off vote next week after Socialists withdrew candidates in an attempt to block it from power.
The FN came first with about 28 percent of the vote nationwide and topped the list in at least six of 13 regions, according to final estimates from the Ministry of the Interior. FN leader Marine Le Pen and her 25-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen broke the symbolic 40 percent mark in their respective regions, shattering previous records for the party as they tapped into voter anger over a stagnant French economy and security fears linked to Europe’s refugee crisis.
Photo: EPA
Marine Le Pen, a lawyer by training, welcomed the “magnificent result,” saying that it proved the FN was “without contest the first party of France.”
A grouping of right-wing parties took 27 percent, official estimates showed, while the ruling Socialist Party and its allies took 23.5 percent.
The polls were held under tight security following France’s worst-ever terror attacks, which have thrust the FN’s anti-immigration and often Islamophobic message to the fore.
Around half the 45 million registered voters took part in the polls.
Any party which secures 10 percent backing in the first round has the right to present candidates in the second round, due on Sunday.
Final estimates showed 47-year-old Le Pen taking a whopping 40.5 percent of the vote in the economically depressed northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, once a bastion of the left.
Marechal-Le Pen did equally well in the vast southeastern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, known for its beaches and countryside.
The far-right success triggered an immediate debate among the mainstream parties as to whether, in regions where they trailed third, they should urge voters to back the candidate opposing the FN.
Socialist leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis said his party would withdraw from the second round in the regions Le Pen and her niece were leading in order “to block” the FN.
However, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the Republicans, which leads the right-wing grouping, repeated his refusal to do the same in key polls where the Socialists were the strongest opposition.
“We must hear and understand the profound exasperation of the French people,” he said.
Le Pen said she was “not worried” by Socialist plans to withdraw, but acknowledged that “things will obviously be a bit less straightforward.”
Right-wing daily Le Figaro and communist L’Humanite both went with Le Choc (shock) after the result yesterday on their front page, while left-wing newspaper Liberation said: “It’s coming.”
Le Parisien carried a poll predicting that, faced with a straight choice in the second round between an FN and a right-wing candidate, 59 percent would vote for the conservative and 41 percent for the far-right party.
French President Francois Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge as a result of his hardline approach since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.
However, his Socialist Party has languished behind the FN and the center-right Republicans.
The FN’s anti-EU and anti-immigrant narrative has been a lightning rod for many French who have lost faith in mainstream parties after years of double-digit unemployment and a sense of deepening inequality.
Victories next week would not only hand control of a regional government to the FN for the first time, but would also give Le Pen a springboard for her presidential bid in 2017. She has tried to “de-demonise” the party since taking over the reins in 2011, distancing herself from the more overt racism of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen — this year going as far as to eject him from the party he cofounded.
The FN’s repeated linking of immigration with terrorism has also helped it climb in the polls since the gun and suicide bombing assaults in Paris.
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