France’s National Front Suffers Election Blow

Tactical voting by Socialist voters kept Marine Le Pen’s National Front out of power in its three main target regions in French regional elections today, handing power in all of them to the conservatives of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, exit polls showed.

Early results had the governing Socialists winning four to five regions, with the mainstream conservative Republicans perhaps taking the rest, including Paris.

The party has traditionally been seen as outside the political mainstream and has never won control of a French region before.

After the poll results for the elections were revealed, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the danger of FN is still sustained though it did not win the elections.

The two French traditional parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, did not completely lose face this Sunday as had been feared, as the far-right party failed to win any of the council positions in this regional electoral runoff.

Even of centre-left voters don’t defect in numbers to the FN – which is, like many nationalist parties, well to the left economically – they may refuse to transfer their allegiance to the Republicans to block them.

Newspapers across the political spectrum reacted with shock to the National Front’s strong showing in the first round, which Le Pen said indicated that the National Front was now “the first party of France”. Marine Le Pen will not be giving press conferences as president of the north. The FN has been kept in its box. But the anti-immigration, anti-European National Front party still gained hundreds of regional councilors across the nation, tripling its presence in regional councils. Latent French nationalism could be a powerful force that would spark a serious debate about the EU.

In a bid to keep the National Front from gaining power, the Socialists have withdrawn candidates who are trailing in key regions to avoid splitting the anti-National Front vote.

But in the end, the results confirmed what an angry Ms. Le Pen herself declared in her concession speech: France is still a two-party country, those who are for the National Front, and those who are against it. “We really are in a bi-party system”, Ms. Le Pen told her supporters Sunday, “no longer right and left, but globalists and patriots, with the globalists working toward the dilution of France in a giant global magma”. It’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the first round of presidential elections, in 2002.

“But if no answers are made to the French people’s concerns, the National Front will continue its rise until the presidential election”, it said in a front-page headlined: “Defeat for all”. In attempt to draw a clear distinction with the Socialists and head off the challenge from the far right, Sarkozy has toughened his party’s stance on immigration issues, calling for the government to restrict immigrants’ access to welfare payments and citizenship and for the EU’s rules on the free circulation of people across borders to be suspended. Winning control of one region – let alone six – would have been a first for the FN. So it failed once more on Sunday to turn growing popularity into power. The second round of the regional elections will take place Sunday.

In the Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur region, her niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, lost with 45.22 percent against 54.78, also despite a 40 percent lead in the first round.

Why did the FN fail to translate their first-round glory into second-round victory?

The socialists won more regions than polls predicted a few weeks ago.

The contrast with the first round of voting on December 6 was stark – Marine Le Pen scored just over 42 percent in the economically depressed Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie compared to almost 58 percent for her centre-right rival Xavier Bertrand.

The relief felt in the Socialists and among former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republicans is not entirely unjustified.