Le Pen had been riding high after extremist attacks and an unprecedented wave of migration into Europe, and the party came out on top in the voting in France’s 13 newly drawn regions in the first round a week ago.
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Her voters had been “disenfranchised by a campaign of lies”, she said.
The FN actually increased its votes in the second round to more than 6.8 million, from 6.02 million on December 6 as more people voted, according to the Ministry of Interior (In French). 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”. All of the above has helped to legitimise the party and to reinforce its durability on the French political landscape.
The party’s leader Marine Le Pen was beaten by the conservatives in the north, and likewise her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen in the south.
The National Front has racked up political victories in local elections in recent years, but winning control of any region would have been an unprecedented boost for the party- and especially for Le Pen’s hopes for the presidency in 2017. Build the Scotland you want to live in – support our new media.
This strategy has largely served the far-right argument that voters should pick them because there was no difference between voting for the so called left or right in France – therefore invibilizing the radical left, which still struggles to appear different to the governmental left in the public’s perception.
Praying in the streets was banned in Paris in 2011 in response to growing far-right protests. Pensioners and higher-earning voters, two groups without which Le Pen can not win an election, are particularly put off by the notion of seeing their life savings diluted by an abrupt passage from the euro to a devalued French franc.
Ms. Le Pen condemned the Republicans and Socialists for colluding to deny FN power.
The party responded by withdrawing its candidates in those regions and calling on its supporters to vote for the Republicans, who won all three.
“We mustn’t confuse regional elections fought on a different system with National Assembly elections where the FN has no chance at all of coming to power in the foreseeable future”, said Jim Shields, head of French studies at Aston University in Birmingham, England.
Although it won no region on Sunday after the Socialists pulled out of its key target regions and urged their supporters to back the conservatives of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the FN still recorded its best showing in its history.
The governmental left won five regions, the right and center-right coalition won eight, including, for the first time in 17 years, the Paris region.
Although the NF received more votes in the first round than ever before, it did so poorly the following week that even its party chief, Marine Le Pen, did not win.
“The results of the elections to the regional councils of the 13 French regions, of course, will have a major impact on the political situation in the country”.
As Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls told reporters: “The danger of the far right has not been removed – far from it”.
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Indeed, the day kicked off the unofficial election season as politicians from all parties cast Sunday’s results in terms of their presidential ambitions.
