France’s Far-right National Front Fails to Top Regional Election

France’s far-right National Front has failed to win the big breakthrough it was hoping for in Sunday’s (December 13) local election run-offs after making massive gains in the first round of voting.

French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen, right, campaigns at the Lille worldwide market in Lomme, northern France, Friday, Dec.11, 2015. The political map changed, with wins in seven regions by the conservative right and five by the Socialists — who once controlled nearly all regions — and one to a candidate unaffiliated with a political party.

The FN had topped the vote in six of 13 regions on December 6, propelled by anger over the struggling economy and fears created by last month’s jihadist attacks in Paris that left 130 dead. From now on in those regions, the only opposition is the FN. News storiesdisplayed here appear in our category for worldwide and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.comand The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization. First estimations showed that Mr. Bertrand, Sarkozy’s former employment minister, won with a resounding 57 per cent of the vote.

What the elections have shown is that there is indeed a ceiling to the far right’s progress.

While many voters dislike the main parties banding together to defeat the far-right, another former conservative prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said he believed the Republicans had no choice but to work with the Socialist government “because the National Front is a common enemy”.

France’s two-round presidential election will be held in the spring of 2017.

Turnout jumped significantly in the second round, and few of these votes went to the far right.

Early results had the governing Socialists winning four to five regions, with the mainstream conservative Republicans perhaps taking the rest, including Paris. In addition, there was a higher voter turnout in the second round, which suggests that many voters who did not participate in the first round made the conscious decision to vote in the second to prevent the National Front from winning.

It hopes a strong showing will help Le Pen’s prospects in the 2017 presidential election.

The FN had taken 28 per cent of the vote nationally in the first round, ahead of 27 per cent for the Republicans and their allies. “Maybe it will make all those politicians stop and think”, said voter Evelyne Risselin in Le Pen’s electoral home base Henin-Beaumont in northern France.

Sarkozy, leader of the Republicans party, praised the voters who turned out on Sunday but said “the warnings” of the first round must not be forgotten. Should Marine Le Pen be the FN’s presidential candidate, which seems highly likely, she will have a strong chance of proceeding to the second round run-off, either against incumbent Socialist President François Hollande or against a reinvented Nicolas Sarkozy (assuming these two indeed become the candidates).

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. The anti-immigration party bash surprised the French political institution last week when it claimed the most noteworthy share of the national vote within the 1st spherical of regional elections.

The National Front came in third after the second round of voting in the previous regional elections in 2010, and third in the most recent legislative elections in 2012, earning the party two seats in the National Assembly.