Defeat for French far-right National Front in key vote

Mr. Sarkozy’s Les REpublicains also stood on around five regions. The results were based on the count of between 71 percent and 100 percent of the votes in each region. Polling agency projections showed the Republican candidate won.

A part of the turn around was likewise as a result of an increased voter turnout that is national, from 50% on 6 December.

Will the frustration of that failure start a drift away from the FN and doom Le Pen’s presidential ambitions in 2017?

“The dynamic is with us”, he said. Then, Sarkozy, who has taken LR to the right to cut the ground under MLP’s feet and guarantee his return to the Elysée in 2017, saw his “ni ni” (abstain) tactic roundly ignored.

The National Front has racked up political victories in local elections in recent years, but winning control of any region would have been an unprecedented boost for the party ahead of presidential elections in 18 months.

“We need to ask ourselves some questions”. “They are very good in the first round, but they crash in the second”, Mr. Lebourg said Sunday night of the National Front.

“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.

Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that despite the result “the danger of the far-right has not been removed, far from it”.

“Tonight, no sigh of relief, no sign of triumphalism”, he said.

Sunday’s result was a swing to the center right after leftist parties won control of every region except one in the 2010 regional elections. So it failed once more yesterday to turn growing popularity into power.

“France in moments of truth has always taken refuge in its real values”, Valls said, urging his compatriots to “build together” after a particularly bitter election campaign.

The French press said the outcome was not a victory for anyone. Instead, she spoke of the “inexorable rise” saying “nothing would stop us now”.

‘By tripling our number of councillors, we will be the main opposition force in most of the regions of France, ‘ she added. The two-round system allowed the mainstream parties, the center-left Socialists and the center-right Republicans, to regroup after the first round and rally around consensus candidates.

But Sunday showed once again that the party struggles in the deciding round as mainstream voters gang up to keep it from power as they did in 2002 when voters switched to Jacques Chirac in a presidential run-off against Marine’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party came in a strong second, and hoped to make substantial gains in Sunday’s runoff.

Ipsos, Ifop and TNS-Sofres projected that Le Pen won around 42 percent of the vote in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, compared with about 57 percent for conservative Xavier Bertrand.

In the past, the National Front has performed well in first-round votes but failed to carry through in the final round.

The Socialists withdrew their candidates from two regions where Le Pen and her niece were running and asked their supporters to vote for their conservative rival to prevent the National Front from scoring symbolic wins.

The conservatives though surged against the governing Socialists, winning seven constituencies to the Socialists’ five, changing the political map of France.

Sociologist Sylvain Crépon says the angry outsider appeal that is Le Pen’s strength is also her weakness, and there is little chance she can shake off a 70 percent unpopularity rating without losing those who support her. Conservative Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi was projected to win about 55 percent.