National Front suffers setback in French election

First estimates are due at 1900 GMT (2.00 p.m. EST), when voting stations close.

The reactions were mixed on the streets of Paris on Monday (December 14).

Le Pen seemed unfazed by the second-round results, vowing that her party’s fight for France was just beginning and that she’d be back on the ballot in the 2017 presidential elections.

“Nothing can stop us now”, she said.

“The dynamic is with us”, he said. Despite the defeat, the leader of the anti-immigrant party still has her sights set on the French presidency. “I do not forget the results of the first round and of past elections”.

There was a sense of panic on the political stage in France as two mainstream parties Conservatives and Socialists scrambled to prevent French regional government from falling into the hands of Front National in the second round of the voting.

Instead, she was the victim of a conspiracy, she told her disappointed supporters. But Le Pen’s anti-immigrant and anti-EU agenda – along with media hysteria that gins up fear and loathing against them – will prove too much to overcome for Le Pen as the country moves toward national elections in 2017.

Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that despite the result “the danger of the far-right has not been removed, far from it”.

“Tonight, no sigh of relief, no sign of triumphalism”, he says. “They are very good in the first round, but they crash in the second”, Mr. Lebourg said Sunday night of the National Front.

“France in moments of truth has always taken refuge in its real values”, Valls was quoted as saying. “By tripling our numbers of councillors, we will be the main opposition force in most of the regions of France”.

The Socialists, now in power, who have been criticized for implementing neoliberal economic policies, opted during the campaign to promote union with the center right, warning radical-left voters that they will be responsible for a far-right victory. Yet the party failed to get a majority in any one region.

The Paris victory is an important symbol for the opposition Les Republicains, led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

“The dam has held for the time being but the FN is making consistent progress in this country and at some point, the dam is going to break”, political analyst Stephane Rozes of the CAP think tank said.

The higher turnout in a presidential election than in regional ballots would also work against Le Pen.

The center-right Republicans-led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy-can only be unnerved that they had to rely so heavily on the Socialist self-sacrifice to pull it off. This makes it all the more likely that the Republicans start tacking further right in an attempt to peel away voters from the FN.

Le Pen had been counting on winning control of some regions this time around to show that her party was fit to govern in the run-up to the next presidential election.

In the past, the National Front has performed well in first-round votes but failed to carry through in the final round.

The failure of Marine Le Pen’s National Front to win a single region in the runoffs puts an end – at least for the moment – to any talk of her becoming president of France.

In all, the conservative Republicans took seven regions, and the Socialists won five, Interior Ministry results showed.

“I thank the voters for protecting our attractive region”, said Xavier Bertrand, the Republicans’ main candidate in Nord-Pas de Calais-Picardie.

Le Pen’s niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, was projected to win about 45 percent in the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region. Conservative Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi was projected to win about 55 percent.