France’s mainstream parties scramble to counter the shock breakthrough of the

To try to make sure Le Pen does not win in the final round, France’s ruling Socialist Party made a decision to pull its candidates out of three regions where it came third, telling supporters there to back Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative Republicans.

National Front won 28 percent of the vote nationally, topping the center-right Republicans, who won 27 percent.

Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, however, said that his party’s candidates could withdraw from the elections in the two regions where the National Front did best and that candidates elsewhere could join with other parties if they so choose.

“This is a bad sign, because the National Front is becoming little by little more legitimate”, Alain Alpern, a former Green and Socialist party local councillor, told Reuters outside an Henin-Beaumont polling station.

While it won 11.42 per cent of the vote in the first round of the most recent regional elections, in 2010, it got 25.25 per cent in the first round of elections to smaller departments in March.

The Socialists’ leader in the National Assembly Bruno Le Roux explained: “There is too big of a risk of victory for the National Front for us to keep our candidates in this region”.

Such a scenario is certainly to happen for the Presidential race to take place in 2017.

“The spectacular showing is the highest ever performance for the anti-immigration, anti-European party and, if it maintains the strong lead in next week’s second round, it could reshape France’s political landscape”, observed The Guardian.

The regional vote was the first electoral test for Hollande since the Paris attacks that killed 130 and prompted his attempts to marshal a united front against Islamic State.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen boasted in a victory speech that the ballots proved what political observers were unwilling to admit: that the party has become a leader in French politics.

Le Pen has demanded a crackdown on Islamists in France.

Speaking to The Financial Times, James Shields, professor of French politics at Aston University said “These results are a shock but they shouldn’t be a surprise”.

For a year now, polls have shown she would be the most popular choice in the first round of a presidential election. Some Paris residents believe Le Pen is using the national mood of fear and anger over the recent terrorist attacks to her advantage.

The FN’s success comes as a wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees from conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa boosts support for eurosceptic parties across Europe, from Germany’s AfD party to Britain’s anti-EU UK Independence Party and the Law and Justice government in Poland.