Ms Le Pen had been riding high after the terrorist attacks on Paris and an unprecedented wave of migration into Europe, and the party came out on top in six of France’s 13 newly drawn regions in the first-round vote a week ago.
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The results were based on the count of between 71 percent and 100 percent of the votes in each region.
Even if the FN has failed to win overall control of a region – just as it had failed to win overall control of any smaller local départementsearlier this year – its broad trajectory is on the up. Jean-Pierre Masseret, the socialist candidate who defied Mr Valls’s order to withdraw from the race, won only 15.2 per cent.
Ms. Le Pen also used the defeats to bolster her claim that she and her supporters are victims of a political elite that twists democracy by uniting against the National Front.
“The dynamic is with us”, he said.
Targeting a large win for a strong bid for 2017 presidential election, the center-right The Republicans secured the first rank also at five regions while tight difference between Left and Right camps was expected in Normadie and Ile-de-France regions where counting is still under way.
Sarkozy paid “homage” to the voters who turned out for Sunday’s runoff elections after skipping the first round. In both the north and the south, the FN’s share of the vote was higher in the second round than in the first, though not high enough for a majority. 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”.
“We now have to take the time for in-depth debates about what worries the French – who expect strong and precise answers – and which we are responsible for”.
In the meantime, Le Pen thanked all National Front supporters, adding that nothing will stop them.
The FN had argued that the political manoeuvring by the main two political parties showed that they were two sides of the same coin and that the far-right offered the only real political alternative. But projections by France’s major polling firms suggested that failed to translate into any second-round victories.
How many regions the conservatives win will be pivotal to the struggle for power within the party.
The results were met with boos and shouts of disgust and disappointment at the election headquarters of Marine Le pen in Henin-Beaumont in northern France. Marine Le Pen pointed this out in her concession speech tonight, saying that she had achieved the “total eradication” of the left.
The results from Sunday’s vote put the Socialist party in second with 28.9 percent and the far-right National Front in third with 27.1 percent.
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”. “History will remember that this is where we stopped the progression of the National Front”.
Le Pen has reaped the rewards of her efforts to “de-demonise” the party bequeathed by her father, but it retains a stridently anti-immigrant edge.
The run-offs were seen as testing the waters for all three front-runners for the 2017 presidential elections, the Socialists’ Hollande, ex-president Sarkozy and Le Pen.
The regional councils in France are responsible for education, public transport and other administrative sectors.
In the south-east where her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was the FN’s lead candidate the conservatives scored 54.5 percent and the FN 45.5 percent the polls showed.
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The Socialists notably lost the Paris region, which conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse won.
