France’s Far-Right National Front Makes Breakthrough After Attacks

Whatever the configuration, Mrs. Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader is assured to be ahead of the first round and present for the second one. “We think the best way to oppose the National Front is by taking our seats in the regional assembly”, he said.

Le Pen’s hardline stances on Islam and immigration resonated with voters after the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

Polls suggest that after the December 13 second round, Le Pen’s National Front could win control of two regions for the first time: Nord-Pas de Calais in the far north and Provence Cote-d’Azur in the south. The left-wing Socialists of President Francois Hollande finished third with 23.5 percent. Former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine, reached the 2002 presidential run-off, which he then lost badly.

France’s far-right National Front ran strongly in a first-round regional vote that was the first election since an attack by Islamic extremists left 130 dead in Paris.

Its leader Marine Le Pen and her 25-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen won 40% of the vote in their respective regions, breaking previous records.

“We do not own the voices of our voters”, Sarkozy’s former foreign minister Alain Juppe said after the Republicans issued a statement ruling out alliances with the Socialists which they said “would give the French the feeling that we are confiscating the election by striking tactical deals behind their backs”.

Voter turnout this Sunday and next will also be key in regional polls that are usually spurned by about half the electorate both because of their complex two-round system and a lack of understanding of their role in France’s multi-layered administrative structure. Many French voters are exhausted with the country’s traditional center-right and center-left forces and see the National Front as the only way to challenge the political establishment.

Marine Le Pen called it a “magnificent result” which proved the FN was “without contest the first party of France”.

The Socialists have already called on their candidates who came in third place in battleground seats to withdraw, to enable strategic voting to block the National Front. “We’ll see”, she said. The vote is also the last national electoral test before the presidential election in April 2017. Together with its centrists allies, Sarkozy’s party came second with 27 percent.

The FN had previously won European Parliament elections in France and local government elections.

The first round of regional elections placed the FN on track to break the grip of socialists and conservatives, cementing the party’s grassroots’ rise across the country.