French election results: Conservatives capture 40 percent

But the anti-immigration, anti-European National Front party still gained hundreds of regional councilors across the nation, tripling its presence in regional councils. Polling agency projections showed the Republican candidate won. (One region, Corsica, was won by local nationalists.) This makes it nearly certain that President François Hollande will run again in the next presidential election, in 2017. Official results are due today.

If confirmed when all votes have been counted, the projected results would confound expectations that the party, with its anti-immigrant, nativist message, was on the verge of an electoral breakthrough that could have added momentum to Le Pen’s hopes of winning the presidency in 2017.

Regional election boundaries were redrawn after the 2010 election, in which the Socialists had won 21 out of 22 regions.

“The dynamic is with us”, he said.

However, polls in recent days showed the National Front winning less than half the vote. In taking 27 per cent of the overall vote in yesterday’s second round, the FN is indisputably a major force in French politics, rather than a protest party as it was often portrayed.

“We now have to take the time for in-depth debates about what worries the French – who expect strong and precise answers – and which we are responsible for”.

The tables turned on Sunday as Bertrand beat Le Pen by almost 15 points. “The danger of the far-right is still around”.

How many regions the conservatives win will be pivotal to the struggle for power within the party.

“France in moments of truth has always taken refuge in its real values”, Valls said.

The leader of the anti-immigration FN, Le Pen, lost out to the right-wing opposition in the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardie region after the ruling socialist party (PS) pulled out of the race before the second round.

Ahead in six regions after last Sunday’s first round of voting, the Front National (FN) failed to secure enough votes in yesterday’s second round of voting.

Marine Le Pen quickly appeared after the results to reassure her supporters.

She celebrated the “total eradication” of the left, who had controlled all but one of France’s regions before this vote and were projected to lose several. “Here we stopped the progression of the National Front”.

The region where Marine Le Pen was a candidate includes the port city of Calais, a flashpoint in Europe’s migrant crisis this year, and suffers high unemployment.

The big winners Sunday appeared to be the conservative Republican party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Pen won 42.8 percent compared with Bertrand’s 57 percent, according to the Interior Ministry.

“After her speech I feel even more able to go into another election with even more rage”, said a supporter pointing at the presidential elections which the National Front and its supporters are already targeting for.

France’s far-right National Front failed to repeat its strong showing of a week ago in Sunday’s second round of voting in regional elections, returns showed.

In the south-east, where Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was the FN’s lead candidate, the conservatives scored 54.5 percent and the FN 45.5, the poll said.