No new gains, but Marine Le Pen repeats her 2014 election successParis, 23 March 2015 (MIA) - French National Front (FN), the nationalist party that whose popular leader Marine Le Pen has been surging in polls ahead of traditional mainstream French parties, had a good showing in the department elections on Sunday. MIA correspondent in Paris reports that FN candidates managed to reach the second round of elections in nearly half of departments.
The opposition Conservative UMP party won most votes overall, about 27 percent. Polls predicted Le Pen's party would win most votes in the elections, taking a third of the electorate, after FN won about 25 percent at the 2014 European Parliament elections. But, in the end, FN only managed to repeat its last year's result, with 26 percent of the vote, and is slightly behind UMP. The ruling Socialist Party was third, with just under 20 percent of the votes.
Marine Le Pen said the result of her party is a clear vote of no confidence in Socialist Prime Minister Manual Valls. As France heads in the second round of voting, UMP leader and former President Nicolas Sarkozy, said that his party won't be making deals to support either FN or Socialist party candidates in the second round.
France has a multi-layered local Government system, with departments in charge of a number of issues, such as road construction and maintenance, part of elementary schools, firefighting crews and unemployment welfare protection. This year, the election has been tweaked, with reorganization in the departments, and with a new rule that provides that all parties must nominate a male and female candidate, guaranteeing that there will be equal representation in the departments.
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