France’s far-right National Front party scored big gains in the first round of voting in regional elections on Sunday.
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The regional vote was the first electoral test for Hollande since the Paris attacks that killed 130 and prompted his attempts to marshal a united front against Islamic State. The party captured 28 percent of the national vote and won six of France’s 13 mainland regions, making it possible that the National Front may govern significant parts of France for the first time.
Mr Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge on the back of his hardline approach to security since the Paris carnage, but his party is being punished for a jobless total of almost 3-million. Sarkozy, however, has refused to enter any formal tactical alliance against the far-right party.
Writing on Twitter Ms Le Pen, the daughter of Front National’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, said: “The vote confirms what previous polls announced but observers did not want to admit”.
The BBC’s Hugh Schofield called Le Pen’s gains “an astonishing performance for a party that until very recently was regarded as beyond the pale”.
“We are without question the first party of France”.
The first round of regional elections placed the FN on track to break the grip of socialists and conservatives, cementing the party’s grassroots’ rise across the country.
The party was long a pariah, and voters left and right joined together to keep Marine’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen from winning a presidential runoff in 2002.
“We must hear and understand the profound exasperation of the French people”, he said.
Cosse said the party supporters should vote for the Republican candidates Christian Estrosi in the Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur southeastern region and Xavier Bertrand in the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region.
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.
About 16% of those who voted for the FN said they had changed their voting intentions after the attacks, an exit poll suggested.
The second round of the regional elections in France is scheduled for Sunday, December 13.
And the Republicans’ deputy leader Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said it was time to “prove the polls wrong”.
When it emerged that at least two of the attackers had entered Europe posing as migrants, the FN went to town with message of “we told you so”.
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“I believe that the National Front’s incredible results are the revolt of the people against the elite”, she said Monday on RTL radio. Previously, the FN has never won a single region.
