The latest about France’s regional elections.
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In the two regions where Marine Le Pen’s FN scored more than 40 percent last Sunday, the Socialist Party made a decision to remove its candidates after the first round, in order to avoid a far-right victory, by transferring the left-wing vote toward the center-right coalition.
Partial results from the Interior Ministry showed the conservative Republicans in the lead in six regions, and the Socialists in five.
The results were based on the count of between 71 percent and 100 percent of the votes in each region.
The Socialists pulled their party out of both races and it appears that many voters cast ballots to prevent the once-pariah National Front from gaining power.
The reactions were mixed on the streets of Paris on Monday (December 14). Philippot was defeated Sunday in the eastern Alsace region.
She encouraged supporters to join her party and said that “in the weeks that follow, throughout the country, there will be the creation of blue marine committees (the National Front colours), who will have the task of welcoming you, of gathering all the French of all origins, who want to participate with us in the work of redressing our dear country”, she said.
The two French traditional parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, did not completely lose face this Sunday as had been feared, as the far-right party failed to win any of the council positions in this regional electoral runoff. It was another blunder for Sarkozy, who during his address chose instead to pay homage to “the refusal of any compromise with the extremes”.
ROMAIN LAFABREGUE/AFP/Getty Images Laurent Wauquiez, right-right Les Republicains party candidate in the Rhone-Alpes-Auvergne region, speaks to the press as he arrives to Lyon’s prefecture after the announcement of the results. One out of every ten French people showed up to vote FN yesterday.
And Mr Sarkozy said now was the time “for in-depth debates about what worries the French”, noting security concerns, unemployment and frustration with the European Union. 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.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “the threat coming from far-right has not yet been eliminated”, while the Republicans’ Nicolas Sarkozy said that the “first round of elections was a warning from the electorate”.
“Tonight, no sigh of relief, no sign of triumphalism”, he said.
Still, politicians on the left and right said mainstream parties must reassess their priorities.
Even of centre-left voters don’t defect in numbers to the FN – which is, like many nationalist parties, well to the left economically – they may refuse to transfer their allegiance to the Republicans to block them.
Many voters on the left and right appeared to have rallied together to keep the party, whose founder has been repeatedly convicted of racism and anti-Semitism, from power.
“In its northern and southern bastions we’ve eradicated the evil-doing Socialist Party”, she said. “By tripling our number of councilors, we will be the main opposition force in most of the regions of France”.
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 dam has held for the time being but the FN is making consistent progress in this country and at some point, the dam is going to break”, political analyst Stephane Rozes of the CAP think tank said.
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 National Front failed to build on first-round leads in the French local elections and has not won any regions.
The far-right party got 6.71 million votes, more than in the first round (6.01 million).
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Polling agencies Ipsos, Ifop, TNS-Sofres projected that the opposition conservatives and governing Socialists won control of France’s 13 regions. Conservative Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi was projected to win about 55 percent.
