Marine Le Pen’s National Front leads French regional elections, exit polls suggest

It’s not the first time the FN have done well – in France’s 2002 Presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine Le Pen’s’s father and Marion Marechal-Le Pen’s grandfather) edged out the Socialist Party candidate to come in second place. Sarkozy, however, has refused to enter any formal tactical alliance against the far-right party.

Marine Le Pen (R) and her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen won more than 40% of the votes in their respective northern and southern regions of France.

France’s far-right National Front party, capitalizing on terrorist attacks last month in Paris, was dominant in the first round of weekend regional elections.

If we fail, Islamist totalitarianism will take power in our country.

Six million French national (FN) decided in the first round of regional elections for the front in six of the 13 metropolitan areas are the candidates of the extreme right-wing front. It is hoping the regional elections will consolidate political gains Le Pen has made in recent years, and strengthen its legitimacy as she prepares to seek the presidency in 2017.

President Francois Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge with his hardline approach since the attacks in Paris. In its former life, people were often too ashamed to reveal that they had voted for the National Front.

She said: “We are not a land of Islam”.

The PS said it was withdrawing from the second round in two regions, in the north and south, to try to block a run-off victory for the FN.

Le Pen has demanded a crackdown on Islamists in France.

His popularity has been rising recently, but that has not translated into votes.

The election result was surprise for France’s traditional two-party dominance.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National, was already polling at 29 percent before the November 13 attacks.

Following publication of the results, CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewry, called on French Jews to vote against National Front in the runoff, according to i24 News.

With the FN also locked in a close race for Burgundy and Franche-Comte in the east, politicians across the spectrum appealed to their supporters to head off a historic victory by the party.

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.

“The strength of the National Front is that increasingly they are seen as an alternative to the failure of the governing parties”, Frederic Dabi, a pollster at Ifop, said on I-tele.

The FN “is putting down roots, structuring itself and steadily winning the confidence of the French people”, she told RTL radio.