French far-right fails to win a single region in elections

Sarkozy’s The Republicans and centre-right allies took 57.5% of the votes in the northern region, where Le Pen was standing, against her 42.5%, the Ifop Fiducial poll for iTELE, Paris Match and Sud Radio showed.

The result indicates that voters are still prepared to cast ballots for political rivals to prevent the National Front party from getting into power.

When her father Jean-Marie Le Pen did just this in 2002, it came as a thunderbolt of shock.

They indicate that the party has been beaten into third place, despite leading in six of 13 regions in the first round of voting.

Aside from immigration concerns, which have been boosting nationalistic parties in other European countries too, the FN’s rise has been built on deep disaffection with mainstream politics among French voters and a frustration with President Francois Hollande’s inability to reduce unemployment.

Turnout figures were 7 percent higher than for the previous regional elections in 2010, with 50.4 percent of those eligible to vote casting ballots by 5 p.m., three hours before polls close in big cities, according to the Interior Ministry.

A torn poster of French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen is seen in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015.

What’s more, 67 percent of the French have a negative opinion of the National Front, an Odoxa poll released December 11 found. Broken down, 76 percent of respondents said it was “discriminatory”, 66 percent said it would bring “disorder” and 63 percent agreed it “has an economic program that would be unsafe for the country”. Tweeting in French on Sunday, Le Pen described the tactical move as “a campaign of slander”. “This distinction will be the grand distinction of the presidential elections”.

“The National Front remains an isolated party that scares people”, Brice Teinturier, director at polling company Ipsos, said on France2 television Sunday.

If the FN wins enough votes, Le Pen is hoping to use the support as a springboard to launch a 2017 presidential bid. Mr. Chirac was re-elected by a wide margin.

A nationalist not affiliated with a major party won Corsica.

This strategy has largely served the far-right argument that voters should pick them because there was no difference between voting for the so called left or right in France – therefore invibilizing the radical left, which still struggles to appear different to the governmental left in the public’s perception. They have urged their supporters in those seats – where Le Pen and her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a 26-year-old rising star of the party, are running – to give their votes to the Republicans instead.

The result for the Paris region is not in, but pollsters predict the conservatives have also won there.

The results of the first round had buoyed the morale of National Front activists.

If confirmed when all votes have been counted, the projected results would confound expectations that the party, with its anti-immigrant, nativist message, was on the verge of an electoral breakthrough that could have added momentum to Le Pen’s hopes of winning the presidency in 2017.