High turnout as France votes in crucial regional elections

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Front was the front-runner heading into the decisive second round of French regional elections, and it is up to voters whether to hand the once-pariah party an unprecedented political victory.

Ms Le Pen is riding high after extremist attacks and Europe’s migrant crisis, and the party came out on top in six of France’s 13 newly drawn regions a week ago, but polls suggest it may fail to translate that into wins in the second round.

Turnout figures were 7% higher than for the previous regional elections in 2010, with 50.4% of those eligible to vote casting ballots by 5pm, three hours before polls close in big cities, according to the Interior Ministry.

Turnout at the same time five years ago was 43.4%.

Candidates have tried to lure to the ballot box the nearly 50% of those who failed to vote in the December 6 first round, because their votes could be decisive.

The once-powerful Socialist Party, which controls all but one of France’s regions, came in third place in the first round and pulled out of key races in hopes of keeping the National Front from gaining power.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s party came in a strong second, and looks set to make substantial gains in the run-off.

Winning control of any region would be unprecedented and a big boost for the National Front – and especially for Ms Le Pen’s hopes for the presidency in 2017.

She cast her ballot in the northern city of Henin-Beaumont, one of 11 run by the National Front.

The far-right leader denounced “this giant campaign of insults, slander, fear” by her rivals during a bitter campaign. Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls has called the National Front a “scam” that “fools the French” and a divisive party that could “lead to civil war”.

The northern region where Ms Le Pen is running is one of two where the governing Socialists ordered their candidates to withdraw and vote for the right to block Ms Le Pen.

Socialists also withdrew in a southern region where her popular niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, is running.

The Socialist candidate refused to pull out in a third region, in the east, where the National Front’s number two, Florian Philippot, scored well.

Socialist President Francois Hollande voted in a polling station in his stronghold of Tulle in central France.

Ms Le Pen and her niece enjoyed strong leads in races they are running in northern France and the region that includes Provence and the French Riviera.

But she faces a tough second-round race against conservative former labour minister Xavier Bertrand in the northern region of Nord-Pas de Calais-Picardie, and her niece faces a similar challenge in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur against conservative Nice mayor Claude Estrosi.

The outcome in the Paris region, now controlled by the left, remains unclear. Valerie Pecresse, a minister under Mr Sarkozy is in a tight race against Socialist speaker of the house Claude Bartolone.

Ms Le Pen pledged to keep fighting to expand voter support for the National Front.

Speaking as results came in, she said in the weeks ahead she will “rally all the French, of all origins, who want to take part with us”.

“Nothing will stop us,” she told cheering supporters.

She tried to put a positive spin on the loss, celebrating the party’s increased number of seats on regional councils, saying they tripled from existing levels.

She celebrated the “total eradication” of the left, which had controlled all but one of France’s regions before this vote and were projected to lose several.

Meanwhile, Mr Bertrand thanked leftist voters for supporting him and keeping the National Front from power.

He said: “Here the French gave a lesson of rallying together, courage.

“Here we stopped the progression of the National Front.”

Mr Valls warned that the far right remains a ``danger'' in France and urged his country to rally together against extremism.

Mr Valls said the results in Sunday’s run-off elections are “not a message of victory”, adding: “The danger of the extreme right has not been set aside, far from it.

“France in moments of truth has always taken refuge in its real values.”