France’s anti-immigrant National Front (FN) made strong gains in the first round of local elections yesterday as President Francois Hollande’s Socialists and his allies suffered losses, according to exit polls, yesterday.
The elections to thousands of town halls across France are the first nationwide voter test for Hollande, who came to power in May 2012 and has seen his popularity fall to record lows for failing to rein in unemployment.
Second round run-offs due next Sunday
An exit poll by pollster BVA put Hollande’s Socialists and their left-wing allies at 43 per cent of the vote, trailing Opposition conservatives who scored 48 per cent.
The FN scored seven percent of the vote, a high national tally given that it fielded candidates in only 596 out of some 36,000 municipalities.
Moreover the National Front won an outright majority in the small northern town and Socialist bastion of Henin-Beaumont.
TV exit polls showed it was first-placed in the eastern town of Forbach and the southern towns of Avignon and Beziers.
“The National Front has arrived as a major independent force - a political force both at the national and local level,” party leader Marine Le Pen told TF1 television.
There was some solace for the Socialists as a TNS Sofres exit poll showed their candidate for Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, well ahead of her conservative rival Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
Other polls showed a slight lead in votes for Kosciusko-Morizet, but the mayor is chosen by the city council and analysts say the power balance there favours the Socialists.
Run-off voting will be held next Sunday.
Even before exit polls came out for Paris and France’s other major cities, Hollande allies acknowledged there was a risk they would see losses.
“We are in the midst of getting the country back on its feet – things are not easy,” Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll said.
Voter turnout was estimated at around the 66.5 per cent level of the last local elections in 2008 – already the lowest in France’s 56-year-old Fifth Republic.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault this week pressed the opposition UMP to urge its voters to back Socialist candidates in towns where it stood no chance, promising that the Socialists would do the same in a joint effort to keep out the FN.