French National Front ahead in regional elections

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is attributing her party’s historic gains in first-round regional elections to a people’s revolt against the political elite.

The two regions where the FN is most likely to win are in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of northern France, where Marine Le Pen is a favourite, and the south-east, where her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen is a leading contender.

With 98 percent of the votes counted, the anti-immigration, anti-Europe party came first in six regions out of 13, securing 28 percent of the total votes – putting it far ahead of coalition headed by President François Hollande’s Socialist Party, which has, so far, secured 23 percent of the votes.

The party also came in third in the eastern Alsace-Champagne Ardenne-Lorraine region, and party secretary general Jean-Christophe Cambadelis said on Monday that it would also withdraw from the runoff there, leaving it, like the other two, to Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative Republicans in a duel with the National Front.

The momentum that the party is now building seems destined to improve those results significantly-even before this weekend’s regional election victory, Marine Le Pen has consistently placed first or second place in the polls for France’s next president. But there are also 666,600 more people out of work now than when Hollande took office and the national unemployment rate, of 10.8 percent, is higher than in the euro zone.

A second round of run-off voting is set to be held on 13 December, as the Socialists and Republicans seek to stem the rise of FN.

Her father is Jean Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front, and served as its outspoken leader for close to 40 years.

This is an unprecedented breakthrough for the far right. “We’ll see”, she said. Experts widely considered its performances, particularly under Jean-Marie Le Pen, as a way to punish mainstream parties.

The showing shattered previous records for the party as they tapped into voter anger over a stagnant economy and fears linked to the influx of migrants into Europe.

“I expect to gain enough momentum in this first round to be optimistic about the second round”, said Marine Le Pen as she cast her vote Sunday, AFP reported. The National Front’s biggest challenge moving forward will be to preserve its anti-establishment appeal after becoming a mainstream party.

France24 offers a look at Front National’s policies: In short, it’s more strongly anti-immigration than any European party now in government and want to boost security and justice spending.

And last week, she raised a storm when, in Toulon, a Mediterranean city with a large number of citizens of Arab descent, she said Muslims could only be French “if they follow customs and a lifestyle that has been shaped by Greek and Roman influence and 16 centuries of Christianity”.