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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Jon Henley

French elections: seven regions for centre right, none for Front National – as it happened

Marine Le Pen votes
French far-right Front National party leader Marine Le Pen votes during the second round of regional elections. Photograph: Michel Spingler/AP

Defeated by mass tactical voting, Front National fails to win a single region

I’m going to wrap this live blog up now. Here’s a summary of the evening’s events:

  • With more than 90% of votes counted in the run-off round of France’s regional elections, seven of the country’s 13 regions have been won by the centre-right Les Républicains of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and their allies, five by the Socialists of president François Hollande and their allies, and – despite a record high score in the first round of voting last Sunday – none at all by the far-right Front National.
  • With the Socialist candidate standing down in order to effectively block her progress and left-wing voters urged to vote for the centre-right, the FN’s leader Marine Pen lost out in her home region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie to Xavier Bertrand, a former conservative employment minister, who garnered a resounding 57% of the vote.
  • In the southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece and the FN’s rising star, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, also lost, to the hardline conservative mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi, who collected more than 54% of the vote.
  • While mass tactical voting deprived the anti-Europe, anti-immigration party – which finished first in six regions after the first round – of a single victory, the party nonetheless achieved its highest ever score of 6.45m votes, beating the 6.42m it managed in the first round of the 2012 presidential elections.
  • Le Pen said her party had been the victim of “calumny and defamation” by the government but added that “nothing could now stop” the Front National’s advance; the Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, said there must be “no relief, no triumphalism, no message of victory” because “the danger of the far right has not been removed – far from it ...”
  • Turnout rose by up to 10 percentage points compared to the first round – particularly in areas where the FN could have won, suggesting many voters mobilised deliberately to beat the party.

Thanks for reading, and good night.

Updated

So here’s the final map of France’s regions, with more than 90% of votes counted, courtesy of Le Monde. The yellow is for Corsica’s regionalists, who won there:

L’Express newsmagazine confirms the Front National’s record high score:

It may have failed to win a single region, but the Front National has beaten its previous record number of votes, the interior ministry has confirmed.

With 90% of votes counted, reports Le Monde, the far-right party has collected 6.45m votes, ahead of its previous high of 6.42m, garnered during the first round of the 2012 presidential elections.

Updated

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece and a rising star in the far-right party, has urged her supporters not to be downhearted.

In Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur we have won the party’s best score in France. To all those who hope to scare us, to discourage us, to disgust us, discourage us, I say: you are mistaken.

We will redouble our efforts, because our love of France has never been more exalted. So don’t be sad. There are victories that shame the winners. In the name of republican values, they have shut down democracy.

Libération sounds a warning note and asks: what now?

The political class can heave a sigh of relief. The worst has been avoided. Those extra voters who mobilised ... proved to be a sort of republican reflex that grips the electorate when catastrophe lies at the bottom of the ballot box. The Front National may be France’s first party, but it is still – to its despair – a first-round party. Even in a three-way contest, it cannot win a major election.

But having scared themselves rigid, and declared after the first round that lessons would have to be learned, our main political leaders risk being struck by a sudden bout of amnesia – forgetting the first round, in order to congratulate themselves on the second. The reasoning: the “political system” may be contested, but in an emergency, when voters decide (at last!) to actually vote, it works.

The temptation, Libération argues, will be to think that nothing need change.

Why criticise ourselves? Why change strategy, alliances? Why come up with an alternative political offer, because this system seems to work? ... But that would be to fail to take full measure of the degree of contestation, which – on this occasion, at least – was overcome.

But, that rather begs the question, for how much longer?

Updated

Le Parisien newspaper confirms the score: seven regions for the centre-right Les Républicains and their allies; five for the Socialists on the left; none for the Front National. It also has the provisional share of the vote for each of the three camps:

A victory for the centre-right

The latest declarations in Ile-de-France and Normandy mean that with most of the votes now counted, the conservative Les Républicains of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and their centre-right allies have won seven of France’s 13 regions: Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, Nord Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, Grand Est, Rhône-Alpes, Pays de la Loire, Normandie and Ile de France.

According to Libération’s tally, the governing Socialists of president François Hollande have won five: Aquitaine-Poitou-Charente-Limousin, Bretagne, Midi-Pyrénées, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Centre. Corsica went to an independent regionalist, Gilles Simeoni.

Updated

According to Le Monde, the centre-right Les Républicains candidate Hervé Morin has also claimed victory in close-fought Normandie:

Valérie Pécresse, the Les Républicains candidate, has announced a victory for the conservative centre-right in Ile-de-France, France’s largest region:

Front National fails to capture a single region

  • Despite finishing first in six of France’s 13 regions an securing nearly 28% of the vote in the first round of regional elections last weekend, the far-right Front National of Marine Le Pen has – according to normally accurate exit polls – failed to capture a single region after the run-off round.
  • Amid mass tactical voting to keep the FN out, centre-right parties won in at least five regions, and centre-left in at least four. In two more, Ile-de-France and Normandie, the governing Socialist party and its conservative opposition Les Républicains are neck-and-neck.
  • With the Socialist candidate standing down to block her progress, Le Pen lost out in her home region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie to Xavier Bertrand, a former conservative employment minister, who scored a resounding 57% of the vote.
  • In the southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece and the FN’s rising star, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, also lost, to the hardline conservative mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi, who collected more than 54%.
  • Le Pen said her party had been the victim of “calumny and defamation” by the government but that “nothing can stop” the Front National’s advance; the Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, said there must be “no relief, no triumphalism, no message of victory” because “the danger of the far right has not been pushed far away, far from it ...”
  • Turnout was up by around seven percentage points on the first round – particularly in areas where the FN could have won, suggesting many voters mobilised deliberately to beat the party.

Updated

With 75% of votes counted, according to Le Monde, the centre-right garnered approximately 7.5m votes, the left 5.8m, and the Front National 5.7m.

And here is Angelique’s news story on the Front National’s failure to win control of any of France’s regions, despite finishing first in six of the 13 during last weekend’s first round of voting:

France’s far-right Front National has failed to win control of any regions in the final round of local elections despite a historically high score in the first-round when it was ranked as the most popular party in France.

The defeat of the FN was down to mass tactical voting, an increase in turnout and warnings by the left that what it called the “antisemitic and racist” party would bring France to its knees. All this combined to stop the FN translating its huge first-round score of nearly 28% into the overall control of any region.

Angelique adds:

Exit polls on Sunday night showed that with less than 18 months to go until the next French presidential election, the nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-European FN still gained hundreds of regional councillors across France — tripling its presence on regional councils and extending its nationwide reach, cementing its grassroots powerbase and boosting its quest for power nationwide.

Despite the FN failing to grab its first region, Marine Le Pen will still use her party’s first round breakthrough performance as a springboard for her bid for the 2017 presidential election.

For the full story, click here.

First thoughts from the Guardian’s Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis:

France Info radio is now calling at least six regions for the centre-right, and four for the left. Normandy and Bourgogne Franche-Comté still too close to call.

Updated

And here is Le Monde’s map of how every commune in France voted in the second round (again, remember, according to the exit polls):

The daily Libération has put together a very nifty interactive showing the results so far, region by region.

To sum up: the left has won in at least three (Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes, Bretagne, Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées), the right in at least five (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, Grand Est, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Pays de la Loire) and the Front National in none.

Right and left are still neck-and-neck in Bourgogne, Centre and Normandie.

Marine Le Pen puts a brave face on a deeply disappointing night for her party, claiming “a great success” for the Front National:

Updated

Valérie Pécresse, the conservative Les Républicains party candidate in France’s largest region Ile-de-France, has comfortably beaten her Socialist rival, Claude Bartolone, speaker of the French parliament, and the National Front candidate, reports L’Obs:

Updated

Marine Le Pen slams "calumny and defamation"

The Front National leader thanked the party’s “patriotic voters”, but added:

Congratulations, too, for having thrown off the indecent slogans, the campaigns of calumny of defamation that were decided upon in the gilded palaces of the Republic ...

Le Pen, defeated in her own region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie where she captured more than 50% of the vote in the first round last week, said the Front National had nonetheless all but eradicated the Socialist party from local politics, adding that she was happy to see:

the inexorable rise, in election after election, of the national movement. By tripling the number of our regional councillors, the FN will from now on be the primary opposition forec in most of France’s regional councils.

Updated

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president and leader of the opposition conservative Les Républicains party (which – unlike the Socialists – did not withdraw any of its candidates to help prevent a Front National win) hailed:

A refusal to compromise with extremes ... and a unity within the Republican family, a unity with the centre

He added, though, that:

this extraordinary mobilisation of French voters for the second round must not make us forget the warnings addressed to all political leaders during the first round

which, of course, the Front National comfortably won.

Prime minister Manuel Valls speaks

The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has given his initial reaction to the projected results. He said there should be

no relief, no triumphalism, no message of victory - the danger of the far right has not been pushed very far away and I will not forget the first round results of these elections.

Valls added:

I understand my responsibility, our responsability as the government under the authority of the president – all this means we must listen more to the French people, act more strongly, more rapidly. Jobs, training for the unemployed has to mobilise all our energies.

He thanked those Socialist voters who had cast their ballots to block the far right, and said it was now up to the politicians to ensure that the French electorate regained its appetite “to vote for, and not just against”.

This, courtesy of Le Monde, is what the map of France’s regions looks like according to exit poll projections. Red = Socialist, blue = conservative, grey = too close to call between the two. As things stand, nothing for the Front National:

Updated

Here is AP’s first take on the surprise results:

Three polling agencies are projecting that anti-immigrant Front National has been routed in regional election runoffs despite dominating the first-round vote.

Party leader Marine Le Pen and her niece lost their bids to run two French regions in elections Sunday seen as an important test for the anti-immigrant party.

Polling agencies Ipsos, Ifop, TNS-Sofres projected that the opposition conservatives and governing Socialists won control of France’s 13 regions.

They showed Le Pen won around 42% of the vote in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, and rival conservative Xavier Bertrand about 57%.

Le Pen’s niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, was projected to win about 45% in the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region. Conservative Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi was projected to win about 55%.

Updated

BFMTV seems fairly confident: “No region for the Front National”, says this screen grab.

The provisional exit polls provided by French polling organisations to the media suggest the opposition conservatives of former president Nicolas Sarkozy has finished first in five of the country’s 13 mainland regions, with the ruling Socialists of president François Holland capturing at least three.

The Front National failed to take any of its three key target regions (Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, and Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine) – but the result is still too close to call in a fourth, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.

  • Three other regions – Normandie, Centre-Val de Loire and Ile-de-France – are also extremely tight, but will not go to the far-right, anti-immigrant party.

    • Updated

    First exit poll results: FN fails to capture single region

    The first provisional exit poll results indicate the Front National has failed in its bid to capture its first French region as moderate parties combine to keep the far right party out.

    Updated

    Turnout very nearly 60% at 7pm, according to the national statistics office INSEE – about 10% higher than during last week’s first round:

    That would mean more than four million French more voters turned out to cast their ballot than last Sunday.

    Updated

    France’s president, François Hollande, cast his vote earlier this morning in his constituency of Tulle, in Corrèze. Some amusement at the fact that he managed to get his ballot in the box this time round – which he failed to do last week.

    For Hollande, as for his rivals Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen, the 2015 regional elections will be a key marker in the run-up to what promises to be an exceptionally tight presidential election in 2017.

    Hollande’s Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, said he had “no hesitation” in urging voters to back Sarkozy’s Les Républicains to keep the FN from power, as they did en masse in 2002 when Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, reached the second round of the presidential elections.

    Updated

    What are France’s 13 new so-called super-regions actually responsible for?

    Created last year from the 22 previous regions to cut red tape and costs, they cannot pass their own laws, so wield little political clout nationally. But they do dispose of sizeable budgets – the largest, Île-de-France, had €4.9bn (£3.5bn) to spend this year.

    Essentially, France’s regions are in charge of economic and business development, tourism, public transport, secondary schools (lycées) and regional arts and culture funding.

    The sheer size of some of them means their presidents will necessarily be high-profile positions, though: Île-de-France, for example, is home to 12 million people, and Auvergne Rhône-Alpes to 7.8 million.

    Updated

    First thing worth noting: turnout looks like being significantly higher than it was during last week’s first round.

    Le Monde’s Les Décodeurs have put together a handy overview showing that at 5pm, more than 50% of France’s electorate had cast their ballots, against just over 43% at the same time during last week’s first round.

    Analysts and pollsters warn, though, against rushing to any assumptions as to what that might mean ...

    Updated

    Good evening and welcome to our live coverage of the 2015 French regional elections – a vote that gives Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National perhaps its best chance yet of turning popularity into real power.

    The anti-Europe, anti-immigration party has won European and local elections in the past two years and achieved a historic breakthrough in the first round of elections for France’s 13 regional councils last Sunday.

    Capitalising on concerns about immigration and France’s ailing economy, as well as widespread disillusionment with mainstream parties and security fears following the Paris Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people last month, the Front National captured a record 27.7% of the vote and finished first in six regions.

    But the outcome of today’s second round is far from certain after the governing Socialist party of President François Hollande urged its supporters to vote tactically – for the conservative Républicains of Nicolas Sarkozy – to prevent the far right from winning what would be its first ever region.

    With Socialist candidates out of the race in two regions where the Front polled above 40% last week, polls have shown Le Pen trailing in her region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, while her niece, 26-year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, was also behind in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

    But tight three-way races are predicted elsewhere, notably Alsace-Champagne-Ardennes-Lorraine, where the Socialist candidate rejected his party’s call to drop out of the run-offs, and in Bourgogne-France-Comté.

    Pollsters have said the only certainty is that the results will be extremely close. Jean-Daniel Levy of Harris Interactive said the FN was “almost certain” to win one region, while OpinionWay predicted it could gain between “zero and five”.

    By 5pm, three hours before polling stations close and the first exit polls are expected, turnout was a full seven percentage points higher than during the first round at 50.5% at the same time last week.

    Success in regional elections is key to the Front National’s strategy of building a network of local power bases and proving its competence to voters in order to mount serious campaigns for France’s presidential and parliamentary elections in 2017. The party has never before run anything bigger than a few small and medium-sized towns.

    We’ll be bringing you all the latest developments through the evening.

    Please feel free to email me at jon.henley@theguardian.com or tweet me @jonhenley

    Updated

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