French far right marks record gains in polls

PARIS—France’s far-right National Front (FN) saw record gains in the first round of regional polls on Sunday just three weeks after Islamic extremists killed 130 people in Paris.

Despite the strong result, it faces an uphill battle to clinch a run-off vote next week after Socialists withdrew candidates to block it from power.

The FN came first with around 28 percent of the vote nationwide and topped the list in at least six of 13 regions, according to estimates from the interior ministry.

FN leader Marine Le Pen and her 25-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen broke the symbolic 40-percent mark in their respective regions, shattering previous records for the party as they tapped into voter anger over a stagnant economy and security fears linked to Europe’s refugee crisis.

A grouping of right-wing parties took 27 percent, the official estimates showed, while the ruling Socialist Party and its allies took 23.5 percent.

The polls were held under tight security following France’s worst-ever terror attacks, which have thrust the FN’s anti-immigration and often Islamophobic message to the fore.

President Francois Hollande has seen his personal ratings surge as a result of his hardline approach since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. But his Socialist Party has languished behind the FN and the center-right Republicans.

The FN’s anti-EU and anti-immigrant narrative has been a lightning rod for many of the French who have lost faith in mainstream parties after years of double-digit unemployment and a sense of deepening inequality.

Victories next week would not only hand control of a regional government to the FN for the first time, but would also give Le Pen a springboard for her presidential bid in 2017.

The FN’s repeated linking of immigration with terrorism also helped it climb in the polls since the gun and suicide bombing assaults in Paris.

When it emerged that at least two of the attackers had entered Europe posing as migrants, the FN aggressively pushed a message of “we told you so.”