PARIS // Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front lost election run-offs on Sunday in three key target regions despite topping last week’s first round, exit polls showed.
That made former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives and their allies the clear winner in all three.
The result followed the withdrawal of president Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party in two of the regions for the decisive run-off round.
The party had called on supporters to vote tactically to keep the FN out of power.
Mr Sarkozy’s Republicans and centre-right allies took 57.5 per cent of the vote in the northern region where Ms Le Pen was standing, against her 42.5 per cent, the Ifop Fiducial poll for iTELE, Paris Match and Sud Radio showed.
In the south-east, where Ms Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was the FN’s lead candidate, the conservatives scored 54.5 per cent and the FN 45.5, the poll said.
The turnout in both regions was more than 61 per cent, up significantly from the first round, the poll showed.
In the eastern region, where the Socialists did not withdraw, the centre right won 48.4 per cent against the FN’s 36.4 percent, according to a separate poll by TNS Sofres-One Point.
If confirmed, the results would be a huge disappointment for Ms Le Pen, who had hoped to use victories as a springboard for presidential and general elections in 2017.
“I’m voting against the FN in the interests of my family,” said Issa Kouyate, a voter of Senegalese origin, as he went to cast his ballot in Marseille, where a high proportion of citizens are of immigrant background.
“There’s danger,” said Mr Kouyate.
He described the FN’s 40.45-per cent first-round turnout in his region as a time bomb.
Tactical voting carries a political risk for the Socialists, though, as it plays into the far right’s claim that the two main parties are indistinguishable from each other.
Voting took place amid heightened security, as the country remains under a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives.
Capitalising on security fears after the terror attacks, the anti-immigration FN topped the vote in six of 13 regions in the first round of voting on December 6.
The party has previously scored well in presidential and European Union elections, but is desperate for local success to bolster its claim to be a grass-roots movement.
Officials results in all of the 13 regions of mainland France were expected to be announced later on Sunday night.
* Reuters and Agence France-Presse
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