French voters headed to the polls Sunday for the second round of voting in regional elections, with the far-right National Front seeking to consolidate last week’s gains to win control of a region for the first time.
The anti-immigration party sent shockwaves through France’s political establishment when it emerged as the leader after the first round of voting last weekend, capitalizing on security concerns in the wake of last month’s deadly Paris terror attacks.
In the first round of voting, the National Front led in six of France’s 13 regions.
It secured 28% of the vote nationally, edging former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative Les Republicains party into second place with 27%, with President Francois Hollande’s ruling Socialist party coming in third with 23%.
Parties that get more than 10% of the vote are eligible to participate in the second round of voting.
In a bid to keep the National Front from gaining power, the Socialists have withdrawn candidates who are trailing in key regions to avoid splitting the anti-National Front vote. They have urged their supporters in those seats — where Le Pen and her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a 26-year-old rising star of the party, are running — to give their votes to the Republicans instead.
But the Republicans have refused to do the same in seats where the Socialists have a better prospect of prevailing.
Newspapers across the political spectrum reacted with shock to the results with the National Front’s strong showing in the first round, which party leader Marine Le Pen said indicated that the National Front was now “the first party of France.”
The party has traditionally been seen as outside the political mainstream, and has never won control of a French region before.
It hopes a strong showing will help Le Pen’s prospects in the 2017 presidential election.
Voting in shadow of Paris attacks
The regional elections are the first to be held in France under a state of emergency imposed in response to last month’s deadly attacks by Islamist radicals in Paris.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. In response, Hollande vowed to destroy the terror group and set about strengthening international efforts to wage a military campaign targeting its territory in Syria and Iraq.
The rise of attacks by Islamist terrorists, combined with the migrant crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim immigrants cross into Europe, has fed support for the National Front’s anti-immigration policies.
Marine Le Pen told CNN’s Hala Gorani in the wake of the Paris atrocities that Europe’s acceptance of migrants on such a scale was “crazy.”
“I had also warned … the authorities very clearly that there will be in these immigrants terrorists, who will infiltrate … and that’s exactly what has happened,” she said.
“Given this kind of huge threat, which is literally a declaration of war to France, we cannot take the risk.”
The National Front came in third after the second round of voting in the previous regional elections in 2010, and third in the most recent legislative elections in 2012, earning the party two seats in the National Assembly.
In May last year, the party had unprecedented success in France’s European elections, winning 25.41% of the vote — enough for 23 seats in the European Parliament.