National Front leads in regional polls

“It’s getting closer”, warns French leftist daily Libération on its front page Monday, alongside a blurry picture of France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen, one day after her far-right party topped the vote in the first round of the country’s regional elections.

Christian Estrosi is the conservative rival in the southeast to Jean-Marie’s granddaughter and FN candidate Marion Marechal-Le Pen, who won more than 40% of the votes in the southern region of France.

On Sunday, Le Pen’s anti-immigration, eurosceptic party took political elites across Europe by surprise, winning 28 percent of the vote in the first-round of the regional elections and winning elections in six of 13 France’s regions.

President Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge on the back of his hardline approach since the Paris carnage, but his party is being punished for a jobless total of around three million.

The Socialists, who finished third, said they will pull their candidates from two key regions to encourage tactical voting against the National Front.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative Republicans party and its allies were projected to come second in the national vote at around 27%.

The polls forecast that the National Front won 30.8 percent of the vote.

The National Front had been gaining popularity even before the November attacks in Paris stirred up nationalist sentiments. Leading far-right expert Jean-Yves Camus said he no longer believes National Front voters are protesting.“When a political party… keeps going through the glass ceiling you can not say it is uniquely a protest party, ” Camus said.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of Les Republicains, said late on December 6 that he is firmly against an alliance with the Socialist Party. 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.

France’s mainstream political parties were scrambling for a way to stop the rise of the far-right National Front (FN) after its historic first-round lead in regional elections. The National Front Party has a history of doing well in the first round but struggling to sustain its support in the second round.

Le Pen has demanded a crackdown on Islamists in France.

The regional elections took place four weeks after the terrorists attacks that killed 130 people in Paris and the FN, which campaigns on security and immigration, benefited from the shock.

“We welcome this magnificent result with humility and seriousness”, Le Pen said from Henin Beaumont in northern France.