The National Front secured a plurality of votes in the first round of regional elections in France, signalling deep dissatisfaction with the governing Socialists in the wake of last month’s terror attacks, Agence France-Presse reported on Sunday.
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The vote is also an important test of FN support ahead of the 2017 presidential election.
Leader of the NF Marine Le Pen, the daughter of NF founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been outspoken in the past about immigration and minorities in France.
The regional elections took place four weeks after the terrorists attacks that killed 130 people in Paris and the FN, which campaigns on security and immigration, benefited from the shock. The National Front’s greatest success came in its traditional stronghold of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie in northern France, the region where thousands of refugees have gathered in a makeshift camp called “the Jungle” in the town of Calais.
“There is too big of a risk of victory for the National Front for us to keep our candidates in this region”, said Bruno Le Roux, the Socialists’ parliamentary leader.
The polls forecast that the National Front won 30.8 percent of the vote.
Her 25-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen seemed to be heading for an equally strong score in the vast southeastern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region that includes beaches thronged by sun-seekers in the summer.
The vote is the first since the country redrew regional borders in August, reducing the number of regions from 22.
About 16% of those who voted for the FN said they had changed their voting intentions after the attacks, an exit poll suggested. The head of the French employers’ group, Medef, warned before the regional elections that her proposals were the exact opposite of what the country needed.
National Front leader Marine Le Pen boasted in a victory speech that the ballots proved what political observers were unwilling to admit: that the party has become a leader in French politics.
The FN had previously won European Parliament elections in France and local government elections. She also said that she was optimistic about the second round.
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According to Barah Mikail, senior researcher at FRIDE worldwide think tank, based in Madrid and Brussels, and Associate Professor at Saint-Louis University, Madrid, despite the results of the FN it is not the most significant political power for numerous French voters. What Ms. Le Pen described as “lost territories” were the French city of Calais on the English Channel, which now has more than 4,000 migrants on its doorstep hoping to reach Britain, and the suburbs of major French cities, many of which have sizable Muslim populations.
