
Polling in France’s thirteen regions
took place today until 17.00 local French time, and the first estimates
were released at 20.00, after only an hour’s worth of counting. It is
French tradition for the official pollsters to make estimates based on
the first hour’s counting, and all are agreed that the FN has polled the
single largest bloc of votes.
The pollsters agree that the FN will end
up polling up to 30 percent of the vote, ahead of the conservative
Republicans, or “Union of the Right” (LR-UDI-Modem). According to the
Ifop estimate released at 8pm French time, the FN took 30.8 percent of
the vote, followed by the Republicans, who took 27.2 percent of the
vote. The Socialist Party was relegated to third place with 22.7 percent
of the votes.
In both regions considered most winnable
by the FN, the party appears to have scored a runaway victory.
According to TNS-Sofres, Marine Le Pen will get around 42 percent of the
vote in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen will
get more than 43 percent of the vote in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
region.
The FN is also in first place in four
other regions: Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine, the so-called Grand
Est of France, where the FN candidate for governor is also the party’s
deputy leader, Florian Philippot; Center; Languedoc-Roussillon /
Midi-Pyrénées; and Burgundy / Franche-Comté.
Speaking as a guest on the Europe 1 radio network, Philippot said he was “doubly satisfied” with the “historic results” achieved by the FN.
He is well ahead of his rivals with between 35 and 39.6 percent of the vote in his region, he said.
He predicted that the “system advocates”
(the conservatives and the socialists) would conduct a fierce campaign
against the FN over the coming week to the second round.
“Now they will try to scare voters; this
will be the week of fear spreading,” he said. “They will try and make
people think that it will be a disaster in the FN areas, but they will
not be believed. They said the same things during the 2014 municipal
elections, and everyone can see that it is going very well with the FN
in the cities we control.”
In her reaction to the result, Marine le
Pen said that this “is a great result which we welcome with humility,
seriousness and a deep sense of responsibility. We aim to achieve
national unity, which the country urgently needs. I call on all voters
who feel, above all, that they are patriotic, to turn their backs on the
deceptive political class.”
Elections in France go to a second round
of voting if no one candidate gets more than 50 percent in the first
round. The second round of voting only takes place between candidates
who won more than 10 percent of the vote in the first round.
This second round is won by whoever polls the most votes, irrespective of whether they make the 50 percent mark.
0 comMENTS:
Post a Comment