French National Front fails to win its regional election targets

Voter intention polls were not run for all regions and several polls – especially in the southeast – forecast only small differences between the candidates.

The victor in Corsica wasn’t affiliated with a major party. Official results are expected early Monday.

Le Pen seemed unfazed by the second-round results, vowing that her party’s fight for France was just beginning and that she’d be back on the ballot in the 2017 presidential elections.

Ms. Le Pen made her presidential ambitions for 2017 clear: “This distinction will be what is fundamentally at stake in the huge political decision of the presidential elections”.

The higher turnout in a presidential election than in regional ballots would also work against Le Pen.

“The dynamic is with us”, he said.

She will keep attacking the European Union while pounding away on what she once called “bacterial” migration, which she says is depriving French people of social resources. It was another blunder for Sarkozy, who during his address chose instead to pay homage to “the refusal of any compromise with the extremes”. Voters took selfies with a relaxed Mr Hollande, who scored a big diplomatic victory on Saturday by getting nearly 200 countries to agree a pact to limit global warming.

On Sunday in Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, where the Socialists pulled out, the ticket headed by center-right candidate Xavier Bertrand garnered 57.8% of the vote, ahead of the National Front list that Marine Le Pen headed, which received a 42.2% share of votes.

“We now have to take the time to debate things to the bottom, about the great anxieties of the French people, who are waiting for answers that are strong, precise and commit ourselves”, he said. He noted security concerns, frustration with European unity, and unemployment – all issues that the National Front’s Marine Le Pen has used to rally support.

“The danger of the far-right has not been removed, far from it”, he said.

“However, the main intrigue of the elections was associated with the National Front”.

Many voters on the left and right appeared to have rallied together to keep the party, whose founder has been repeatedly convicted of racism and anti-Semitism, from power.

For Arnauld, France should look up to UK’s political system (first part the post) and stop conducting two-round elections.

True, it wrested control of the Paris region for the first time in 17 years, but it only kept the FN at bay in two key regions – Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardy and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur – after the Socialists dropped out and their supporters voted tactically.

She tried to put a positive spin on the loss, celebrating the party’s increased number of seats on regional councils, saying they tripled from existing levels.

The Socialists fear that some of their supporters might stay home rather than vote for the party of Mr Sarkozy, who is widely despised by the left. When Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the second round of presidential elections in 2002, Socialists called for their supporters to back center- right President Jacques Chirac in the second round. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy is considered one of the favorites, but he’s facing high-profile competitors. “History will remember that it was here in that we stopped the advance of the Front National”, Bertrand said after his victory was announced. The National Front has for decades been a thorn in the side of the French political class, the kingmaker in vote after vote.

Three polling agencies are projecting that anti-immigrant National Front has been routed in regional election runoffs despite dominating the first-round vote.

Even UKIP leader Nigel Farage has previously ruled out working with Le Pen, accusing her party of “anti-Semitism and general prejudice”. They have also lost the Paris region, which conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse won.

“Voters should not be treated like children, nor be terrorised”, a smiling Marine Le Pen told reporters after casting her vote in Henin-Beaumont.