NATIONAL FRONT FACES A TOUGHER POLL TEST

After a week in which she and her far-right National Front party seemed ascendant, Marine Le Pen is heading into today’s second round of French regional elections facing a new and more challenging political equation that will test the appeal of her nationalist, antiimmigrant message.

The National Front was the clear winner in the first round last week, stunning the governing Socialists as well as the mainstream conservative party, the Republicans, and raising expectations that Ms Le Pen would emerge from the second round with victories in at least two regions. But the latest polling suggests that she could be in for a tough battle both in the northern region around Lille, where she is on the ballot herself, and in a southern region around Nice being contested by her niece Marion Marechal Le Pen.

The difference: The Socialist Party candidates, who finished third in the first round of both those races, withdrew this week in order to leave the field clear for the Republicans. Their logic is that it is better to unify the anti-National Front vote, despite the enmity between the Socialists and the Republicans, than to allow Ms Le Pen to split the vote of the more traditional parties.

Ms Le Pen and her associates can correctly boast that theirs is the “first party of France,” as they did at a rally in Paris on Thursday night: The National Front was the top vote-getter among the three leading parties in the first round of the current elections. But when one of the mainstream parties withdraws, the election comes down to the National Front versus the anti-National Front vote. And judging by polls and previous election results — in local elections in March, the National Front was beaten time after time in head-to-head match-ups with mainstream conservatives in the second round — the anti-National Front vote can frequently be a substantial majority.

In response to the Socialists’ decision to leave the field in favour of the Republicans, the party of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, Ms Le Pen has been lashing out at what she called “the political mafia” formed by her opponents.

At the rally on Thursday night, in front of hundreds of cheering supporters at the Salle Wagram theatre, Ms Le Pen, between boasts and mocking attacks on her opponents, acknowledged that success for her party was not assured.

“There remains a second round, and nothing is guaranteed,” she told the roaring crowd, as strobe lights flashed in the packed hall and music pounded. But she immediately reassured them by adding, “We know that the moment of change has been initiated.”

Her supporters loved it when she called the Socialist premier, Manuel Valls — who has been suggesting a coalition with rivals to block the National Front on Election Day — a “junior-grade braggart”, using a Spanish-origin word, “matamor”, or show-off, that subtly evoked his birth in Spain. It was a nod to her party’s anti-immigration stance.

The party has been riding high for weeks, its expectations substantially bolstered in a first round of voting last Sunday: the National Front came out largely on top in both the northern and southern regions, winning more than 40% of the vote, way ahead of its nearest rivals, and shocking France’s political and media establishment and underscoring Ms Le Pen’s credibility as a presidential candidate in 2017. “The old world is in the process of disappearing, right in front of our eyes,” Ms Le Pen said on Thursday night.

All week, the country’s news media has been full of lamentations about the possibility of a far-right party, rooted in wartime collaboration and now surfing on an anti-immigrant wave, taking over large sections of France. A Front victory would also be something of a first in Europe, commentators have pointed out, because extremist parties have been forced to seek alliances with mainstream parties elsewhere in Europe.

Regions of France that have traditionally resisted the party’s appeals — the southwest, the Alps, central areas around the Loire — seemed to have fallen under its spell in Sunday’s voting, with the Front boosting its support in all those places. Pollsters said the Paris terrorist attacks of Nov 13 had bolstered the party, with its anti-immigrant message finding new resonance in a fearful electorate.