Bouches-du-Rhone general council’s incumbent president and founder of the La Force du 13 party Jean-Noel Guerini gives a speech following the anouncement of results for the first round of the French departementales elections on March 22, 2015 in Marseille. AFP
The conservative alliance, including Sarkozy’s opposition UMP, took 32.5 percent of the vote according to the latest polls, ahead of the governing Socialist Party led by much maligned President Francois Hollande.
The anti-EU and anti-immigration National Front (FN) led by Marine Le Pen, which had dominated the airwaves during the campaign, fell short of polls that had put it in the lead in the run up to the elections.
Provisional official figures gave the FN around 25.35 percent, behind the 30 percent or more it was tipped to win from French voters, dissatisfied with the stagnant economy and issues surrounding immigration.
The far-right party led the first-round vote in 43 out of 98 “departments” — which have power over local issues such as school and welfare budgets — that voted in Sunday’s poll, according to interior ministry figures.
The FN is expected to go through to the second round in more than half of the 1,100 “cantons” — an administrative division below “departments” — that will vote again in a week, an AFP analysis of the data showed.
The party’s best results “are concentrated in the southeast, particularly in the cities and near the cities it runs,” said political scientist Jean-Yves Camus.
That put it ahead of Hollande’s ruling Socialist Party, whose failure to address double-digit unemployment has seen him haemorrhage support since he took charge in 2012.
Provisional interior ministry figures gave the Socialists and their left-wing allies around 22 percent of the vote.
The mainstream parties will be able to call on smaller allies when voters return for run-off elections next Sunday, while the FN will struggle to find partners.
“There will be no local or national deal with the leaders of the FN,” declared Sarkozy immediately after the initial figures were released.
– ‘Hate’ campaign against FN –
French far-right Front National (FN) party’s MP Marion Marechal-Le Pen (C), in Carpentras, southern France. AFP
“Tonight, the far-right, even if it is too high, is not the leading political party in France,” said Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
He called on voters to back either the left or right in next week’s second-round run-offs to keep the far right from power.
The FN went into the elections polling neck-and-neck with Sarkozy’s right-wing alliance of the Union for a Popular Movement and the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI).
Le Pen returned to a common theme of her campaign after the results were announced, saying the mainstream parties were conspiring in a campaign of “hate” against her party.
She remained bullish about the initial results, pointing to the fact they were higher than the party’s victorious tally in last year’s European polls.
“This massive vote for the National Front that is taking root in election after election shows that the French want to rediscover their freedom,” she said
View Comments (2)
The very fact that all the media are portraying this as some kind of 'defeat' for the National Front - when in fact, they won more votes than any other individual party, and massively increased their vote compared with the past - illustrates so clearly how all mainstream media is controlled by the EU and their puppet parties in each EU country.
I'm American living in France and there is a investigation going on right now because some people were saying dead people voted for Sarkozy, now do I believe this, at this point seeing all the bullshit that comes out of the mouths of these politicians I would believe anything.
But your right it is a win for the FN and if you look there votes go up every year by large amounts.
Personally I say Socialist screwed up UMP screwed up put them together and you have a huge fuck up so give the FN a chance.