Their share of the vote was bigger but they didn't win control of any regions at all.
It seems they failed to gain control in a couple of regions only because the Socialist Party withdrew its candidates and Socialist voters turned out in droves to vote for Sarkozy's Republicans.
Anti-National Front voters turn out to deny Le Pen
The Socialists think they have saved France from Nazis.
On Sunday, Ms Le Pen saluted the fact that her party had become the “largest opposition force in most regional councils” and that it had attracted more voters than when she ran for the presidential elections in 2012.
“At least the second round of voting has made clear the links [between the mainstream parties] which share power,” she added.
Ms Le Pen attracted 42 per cent of the vote, while her centre-right opponent, Xavier Bertrand, reached nearly 58 per cent.
Mr Bertrand, a former minister under former President Sarkozy, thanked Socialist voters for helping him beat Ms Le Pen in the north.
“History will remember that it was here that the FN’s ascension was stopped,” he said.
This is the second time the Socialists have thrown in with the French establishment right to keep out the FN.
And it will likely happen again, next time in the French presidentials.
The National Front had promised a historic breakthrough after coming out of the initial round ahead in six of France’s 13 regions, with strong chances of winning three of them: Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur in the south, Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the north, and Alsace-Lorraine in the east.
The Socialist party responded by withdrawing its candidates in those regions and calling on its supporters to vote for The Republicans, who went on to win all three.
That’s a foretaste of what may happen in the 2017 presidential vote.
“Marine Le Pen into the second round in 2017 is a bet worth making,” Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at Iris, a French political research institute, said in an interview last week.
“Marine Le Pen winning the second round is very improbable.”
The National Front is “the party that is the most rejected by the French.”
. . . .
“When faced with the National Front, 60 to 70 percent of the French are ready to deny it victory,” Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, head of the Socialist Party, said on Europe 1 radio on Monday.
The FN, of course, poses no threat whatever to French republicanism or the constitution of the Fifth Republic.
Hitler and Allende were both pledged to and already guilty of illegal actions to sabotage and ultimately bring down the German and Chilean Republics, the former aiming at a fascist dictatorship and the latter at revolutionary Leninism.
Had committed republicans done to them what they did to the FN they would never have come to power and Germany, Chile, and the world would have been better off.
[The case of Mussolini in Italy was similar, but there the failure to stop Fascism was all Victor Emmanuel's.]
The Socialists in France are only protecting the EU (the FN is relatively Euroskeptic) and continued high Muslim immigration.
Sarko's Republicans did not participate in the anti-FN hysteria, and might not in the presidentials.
But his presumed candidacy might benefit from another panic among Socialists, if the Socialist candidate runs behind him in the first round.
The National Front had promised a historic breakthrough after coming out of the initial round ahead in six of France’s 13 regions, with strong chances of winning three of them: Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur in the south, Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the north, and Alsace-Lorraine in the east.
The Socialist party responded by withdrawing its candidates in those regions and calling on its supporters to vote for The Republicans, who went on to win all three.
That’s a foretaste of what may happen in the 2017 presidential vote.
“Marine Le Pen into the second round in 2017 is a bet worth making,” Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at Iris, a French political research institute, said in an interview last week.
“Marine Le Pen winning the second round is very improbable.”
The National Front is “the party that is the most rejected by the French.”
. . . .
“When faced with the National Front, 60 to 70 percent of the French are ready to deny it victory,” Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, head of the Socialist Party, said on Europe 1 radio on Monday.
The FN, of course, poses no threat whatever to French republicanism or the constitution of the Fifth Republic.
Hitler and Allende were both pledged to and already guilty of illegal actions to sabotage and ultimately bring down the German and Chilean Republics, the former aiming at a fascist dictatorship and the latter at revolutionary Leninism.
Had committed republicans done to them what they did to the FN they would never have come to power and Germany, Chile, and the world would have been better off.
[The case of Mussolini in Italy was similar, but there the failure to stop Fascism was all Victor Emmanuel's.]
The Socialists in France are only protecting the EU (the FN is relatively Euroskeptic) and continued high Muslim immigration.
Sarko's Republicans did not participate in the anti-FN hysteria, and might not in the presidentials.
But his presumed candidacy might benefit from another panic among Socialists, if the Socialist candidate runs behind him in the first round.
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