France’s far-right National Front (FN) failed to win a single region in elections on Sunday despite record results, as voters flocked to traditional parties to keep them out of power.
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Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen spun a positive spin on her defeat, claiming that nothing could stop her party’s momentum as it won a historically high number of votes (6.6 million). Yet the party failed to get a majority in any one region.
With most votes counted, candidates from centre-right parties including the Republicans of former President Nicolas Sarkozy were expected to win in eight of France’s 13 mainland regions, including ones where Le Pen and her niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, were candidates.
The French conservative who routed far right leader Marine Le Pen in a critical regional election thanked leftist voters for supporting him and keeping the anti-immigrant National Front from power.
The anti-immigration FN won more votes than any other party nationally in last week’s first round, boosted by fears about security and immigration after the attacks in Paris a month ago that killed 130 people. From now on in those regions, the only opposition is the FN.
Xavier Bertrand, a labor minister under former President Sarkozy, said after the results were announced, said “Here the French gave a lesson of rallying together, courage”. She hailed the “total eradication” of Socialist Party representation in the south-east and the northern regions that the tactical vote produced, and condemned the concerted campaigns against her as “defamation decided in gilded palaces”.
Wedged between Hollande and Le Pen, Sarkozy appears to be finding it tough to conquer new ground. All of the above has helped to legitimise the party and to reinforce its durability on the French political landscape. Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called the National Front a “scam” that “fools the French” and a divisive party that could “lead to civil war”.
France’s two-round presidential election will be held in the spring of 2017. It compares with the 6.42 million ballots and 17.9 percent of the vote that Le Pen obtained in the first-round of the 2012 presidential election.
The Socialists notably lost the Paris region, which conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse won. In addition, there was a higher voter turnout in the second round, which suggests that many voters who did not participate in the first round made the conscious decision to vote in the second to prevent the National Front from winning.
“When faced with the National Front, 60 to 70 percent of the French are ready to deny it victory”, Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, head of the Socialist Party, said on Europe 1 radio on Monday.
Voter intention polls were not run for all regions and several polls – especially in the southeast – forecast only small differences between the candidates that were often within the margin of error for such surveys anyway.
Le Pen and her niece enjoyed a strong lead in races they are running in northern France and the region that includes Provence and the French Riviera.
At any given moment there will always be more people who oppose the FN than support it. And that means that Le Pen ever coming to power in France is most unlikely.
The National Front has racked up political victories in local elections in recent years, but winning the most seats in an entire regional council would have been a substantial success.
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The election was likewise the last before parliamentary and presidential polls in 2017, and the FN were expecting to put it to use as a springboard for the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen.
