Marine Le Pen’s FN party was ahead in at least six of France’s 13 regions, with exit polls showing the party attracted more than 30% of the vote – eight points ahead of President François Hollande’s governing Socialist Party.
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His Socialist Party (PS) has withdrawn from the second round in two regions to unify the anti-FN vote. President Francois Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge as a result of his hardline approach since the attacks, but his Socialist Party has languished behind the FN and the centre-right Republicans.
France’s National Front political party leader Marine Le Pen delivers a speech during the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 6, 2015.
However, since taking over as leader in 2011 Marine Le Pen has sought to make the FN a less toxic brand, dialling down its racist overtones. “It has gone backwards too far”, Sarkozy said.
After election, Le Pen assessed the result as “historic, extraordinary result” and stated that “It is a magnificent result that we will treat with humility and a profound sense of responsibility”. “The people no longer support the disdain they have been (subjected to) for years by a political class defending its own interests”. According to them, it would be necessary to desist to stem the rise of the Front National where the party came in third.
Regional councils don’t have a huge amount of power but they do have oversight over local transport and some aspects of the school system.
Though Le Pen has attempted to steer her party away from some of its more extreme rhetoric of the past, she has been typically uncompromising on the immigration issue. Having attempted to detoxify the party of the unpalatable far-right and anti-Semitic excesses of her father Jean-Marie, Ms. Le Pen’s party polled some 28% of the vote nationwide.
“A lot of people associate immigrants with terrorism, so the fact that she wants to have less immigrants appeals to a lot of people”, says Paris-based journalist Stefan De Vries. The leaders of all three top parties are planning presidential runs in 2017, and winning support in the regionals allows for a stronger bid for president.
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But in two regions – the north and on the Cote d’Azur – the National Front has smashed the opposition. What Ms. Le Pen described as “lost territories” were the French city of Calais on the English Channel, which now has more than 4,000 migrants on its doorstep hoping to reach Britain, and the suburbs of major French cities, many of which have sizable Muslim populations.
