French voters go to the polls in the second round of regional elections that will show whether the far-right National Front can turn popularity into power.
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French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen, right, campaigns at the Lille global market in Lomme, northern France, Friday, Dec.11, 2015.
Winning those seats would give the National Front unprecedented power in the French government and position Marine Le Pen to run for the French presidency in 2017.
The result for the Paris region is not in, but pollsters predict the conservatives have also won there.
Turnout figures were 7 percent higher than for the previous regional elections in 2010, with 50.4 percent of those eligible to vote casting ballots by 5 p.m., three hours before polls close in big cities, according to the Interior Ministry. They were projected to end up losing several regions.
In the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Le Pen was beaten by Xavier Bertrand from the center-right The Republicans (formerly the UMP).
“In its northern and southern bastions we’ve eradicated the evil-doing Socialist Party”, she said.
The FN has topped European and local polls over the past two years, bolstering Le Pen’s claim that it is now “the first party of France”. The younger Le Pen has made it clear that she shares her family’s view that immigration is to blame for many of France’s problems.
The National Front failed to build on first-round leads in the French elections and has not won any regions. According to official results, Marechal-Le Pen has garnered 48.85% of votes and Estrosi has won 51.15%.
The National Front party leader was less than happy after failing to win any regions despite being predicted to pick up at least one.
After both secured more than 40% of the vote in the first round, the trailing Socialist candidates in those regions pulled out so their voters could support the Republican candidate against the FN for the second round.
“The only thing that is certain is that it will be a very tight race”, political analyst Joel Gombin, a specialist of the far-right, said of the run-offs. “And when I see that it is in regions where we fielded centrist candidates that we fared the worse, you’d have to be mad to think centrism is the way forward”.
If confirmed, the results would be a disappointment for Le Pen, who had hoped to use victories as a springboard for presidential and general elections in 2017.
The other high profile FN candidate to lose was Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen who couldn’t repeat her first round performance in the Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur region.
Marine Le Pen has moved to distance herself from the politics of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, going …
“We now have to take the time for in-depth debates about what worries the French, who expect strong and precise answers”, he said, citing Europe, unemployment, security and identity issues.
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Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the FN wanted to return France to the “wars of religion”, and should be stopped at all costs.
