French poll result - National Front misses target

ONE-IN-FOUR of French voters in Sunday’s first round of local elections endorsed Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front. 

Polls suggested the anti-immigrant, anti-euro and stridently nationalist party would get at least 30% of the vote, a considerable advance on the party’s 25% high-water mark in the 2014 European elections.

The NF, sanitised and made to seem less intolerable and intolerant than it was under her father by Ms Le Pen, was roundly beaten by former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP and their allies.