France’s far-right Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, has failed to win control of any regions in the final round of local elections despite a historically high score in the first-round when it was ranked as the most popular party in France.
The defeat of the FN was down to mass tactical voting, an increase in turnout and warnings by the left that what it called the “anti-semitic and racist” party would bring France to its knees. All this combined to stop the FN translating its huge first-round score of nearly 28 per cent into the overall control of any region.
But the Socialist Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, deliberately avoided any triumphalism and did not claim that the steady rise of the far-right party had been definitively stopped.
“Tonight there is no relief, no triumphalism, no message of victory,” he said. “The danger of the far right has not been removed — far from it — and I won’t forget the results of the first round and of past elections.” He said it was now the government’s duty to “listen more to the French people” and “to act in a stronger, faster way” particularly on employment in a country with record joblessness.
Exit polls on Sunday night showed that with less than 18 months to go until the next French presidential election, the nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-European FN still gained hundreds of regional councillors across France.
France Regional Elections
Courtesy: Graphic News Despite the FN failing to grab its first region, Ms. Le Pen will still use her party’s first round breakthrough performance as a springboard for her bid for the 2017 presidential election.
Addressing her supporters, Ms. Le Pen presented her party as the victim of “calumny and defamation” by the government who she said had “intimidated and infantilised” voters by teaming up with its rivals on the right to keep the FN out of power. Ms. Le Pen herself failed to capitalise on her high first-round score in the vast northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, after the Socialist party pulled out of the race and made an extraordinary plea for its voters to choose Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing Les REpublicains candidate Xavier Bertrand just to stop Ms. Le Pen. First estimations showed that Mr. Bertrand, Sarkozy’s former employment minister, won with a resounding 57 per cent of the vote.
Le Pen’s niece, Marion MarEchal-Le Pen, 26, an MP and rising party star hoping to lead the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cute d’Azur, was also kept out by the tactical voting of the left for another Sarkozy candidate, the hard-line mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi. First estimations showed he had won by about 54.4 per cent.
First estimates showed the left had performed better than expected, winning at least five regions. Mr. Sarkozy’s Les REpublicains also stood on around five regions.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015
