National Front Making Gains, Polls Say

France’s mainstream political parties were scrambling for a way to stop the rise of the far-right National Front (FN) yesterday after it took a historic first-round lead in regional elections.

Sarkozy’s conservative Republicans party and their allies came second in the overall national vote, at just under 27 percent, behind the far-right National Front but ahead of the Socialists at 22.7 percent, according to an interim count of the votes.

A second-round was planned for Sunday; in the interim other parties will negotiate and jostle for position.

“When we withdraw it is not to sulk, it is to win”.

Sarkozy has refused any agreement with the Socialists to prevent the National Front from winning any of France’s 13 regions. The Socialists, who finished third, said they will pull their candidates from two key regions to encourage tactical voting against the National Front.

In regional elections, candidates can qualify for the second round if they receive 10 percent of registered voters in the first round.

The nationalist party came first in six of France’s 13 regions, with party leader Marine Le Pen getting 40.6% of the vote in the north, and a similar score for her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, in the southeast, Le Figaro reports.

FN leader Marine Le Pen was on course to win control of the economically depressed northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, once a bastion of the left.

In a speech one day after the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, Le Pen said, “France and the French are no longer safe”. “We have the vocation to achieve the national unity that the country requires”, she said.

After a string of electoral highs, the FN broke another glass ceiling on Sunday, boosted by voters’ fears over the Paris attacks, immigration linked to the refugee crisis and record unemployment.

The vote may redraw the political landscape, making French politics a three-way race as it gears up for 2017 presidential elections after decades of domination by the Socialists and conservatives.

Left-leaning Libération said that “anyone who values the Republic should understand that we face the worst possible situation … we must do anything to avoid it”.

The second round runoff vote for regional elections takes place next weekend.

French President Francois Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge as a result of his hardline approach since the Paris attacks.

Le Pen said she was “not worried” by Socialist plans to withdraw but acknowledged that “things will obviously be a bit less straightforward”.

“There is a choice between two visions of France”, Valls said Monday night on the TV station TF1 – that of traditional parties and that of the extreme right “which divides the French, tries to pit one against the other”.

The FN’s repeated linking of immigration with terrorism has also helped it climb in the polls since the gun and suicide bombing assaults in Paris.

For the FN, this is the best in a series of strong performances over the past two years.