On Sunday, Le Pen’s anti-immigration, eurosceptic party took political elites across Europe by surprise, winning 28 percent of the vote in the first-round of the regional elections and winning elections in six of 13 France’s regions.
Advertisement
France’s far-right National Front (FN) stood Monday at the gates of power in several regions after record scores in the first round of elections, held just three weeks after the Paris attacks.
The Socialist Party (PS) of president Francois Hollande and prime minister Manuel Valls came only third with around 23 percent.
Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, however, said that his party’s candidates could withdraw from the elections in the two regions where the National Front did best and that candidates elsewhere could join with other parties if they so choose.
In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, a rustbelt bastion of the socialists who rule at national level, final estimates gave Ms Le Pen more than 40 per cent of the first-round vote.
The National Front has for decades called for reduced immigration and for France to retake control of its borders as well as its currency.
It was on track to place first in six of the 13 regions. Former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine, reached the 2002 presidential run-off, which he then lost badly.
The party has previously signalled that it would strip away President Hollande’s equal marriage reforms, with Presidential and Parliamentary elections set for 2017.
“After the November 13 attacks we saw a clear increase in support for the National Front”, Ifop pollster analyst Jerome Fourquet said. Since then is seems more, rather than less, likely she will top the first round of France’s presidential elections in 2017.
According to exit polls, the FN garnered up to 30 per cent of the votes outpacing the Conservatives, who collected up to 27.5 per cent.
Le Pen’s success is widely seen as part of a reaction to the Paris attacks last month.
Le Monde wondered: “how can a reactionary and xenophobic party, which is made, in spite of what is said, by an ideology that goes against the values of the Republic, appear as an opportunity for over one in four voters?” Experts widely considered its performances, particularly under Jean-Marie Le Pen, as a way to punish mainstream parties.
“When a political party … keeps going through the glass ceiling you can not say it is uniquely a protest party”, Camus said.
Advertisement
Marion Maréchal Le Pen, niece of the party leader, last week said Muslims could not be French because they rejected France’s “customs and morals” rooted in Christianity.
