Exit Polls: French Far Right Routed in Sunday's Regional Elections
by VOA News December 13, 2015
Exit polls in France are projecting that voters decisively have rejected the country's anti-immigrant far right National Front in Sunday's regional run-off elections.
National Front leader Marine Le Pen and her niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, both lost bids to run key French regions, and the party also lost a third contested area.
The National Front topped voting in six of the country's 13 regions in the first round of elections a week ago, but the exit polls showed former president Nicolas Sarkozy and his allies were the clear winners in the second round.
Results from all 13 regions of mainland France were expected later Sunday. But if the exit polling results are confirmed, it would be a stinging defeat for Le Pen, who had hoped a victory would serve as a springboard to launch a 2017 presidential bid against Sarkozy and the country's socialist president, Francois Hollande.
The National Front had hoped to take control of a region for the first time, amid voter concerns about Europe's refugee crisis and last month's terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
But the ruling Socialists, who came in third last Sunday, withdrew their candidates in two key regions for the second round, urging their supporters to back Sarkozy's Republicans, who finished second last week, in order to prevent a National Front victory.
Hollande's personal approval ratings have soared with his hardline stance since the terrorist attacks, but his party's ratings remain low.
Before the regional elections got under way a week ago, it was widely speculated that the Islamophobic National Front party would make political gains against the ruling Socialists in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. National Front ratings had been rising since the attacks, and party leaders have consistently linked terrorism with immigration.
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