France’s traditional conservative party has dominated the first round of regional elections and Marine Le Pen’s far-right party performed less well than expected, according to early polling projections.
French citizens voted across the country on Sunday in a vote that, despite having local issues at its core, was being regarded by some as a prelude to next year’s presidential election.
But the vote has been marked by exceptionally low turnout, at less than 34 per cent.
Three polling agencies now project that traditional conservative party, The Republicans, will have the most overall votes, with about 26-28 per cent of public support.
They are followed in the projections by Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, formerly the National Front, which was hopeful of gains in at least one of the 13 regions of mainland France.
Pre-election polls had suggested that the far right could, for the first time, win the government of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Five million people live in the region, which includes Marseille, France’s second-biggest city.
Because the vote is at the local authority level, campaigning from Brittany to Burgundy to the French Riviera largely focused on issues such as transportation, schools and infrastructure.
But leading politicians were also using the 2021 election as a platform on which to test ideas and win followers ahead of next April’s presidential vote.
Voters will also be choosing people to run France’s 100 “départements,” another layer of the country’s governance system.
Slow start to much-anticipated Sunday vote continues throughout the day
Even by midday on Sunday turnout was much lower than usual, at just 12 per cent nationwide. In Marseille itself, many polling stations were said to be standing largely empty.
Those who did show up to vote had to stay masked and socially distanced and carry their own pens to sign voting registries.
Patrice Grignoux, a 62-year-old tech consultant casting his ballot in Paris, told AP that the focus on national politics was frustrating. “The presidential election is a world in itself,” he said.
“When you take Brittany or the Paris region, it’s totally different. The north is also completely different. There are issues you find at a regional level but have nothing to do with national issues.”
Minority parties eyeing new regional targets
Parties that win more than 10% of the votes in Sunday’s first-round regional vote can advance to the decisive runoff on June 27.
France’s traditional conservative Republican party looks set to keep control of several of the seven regions it currently runs, including the all-important Paris.
One of the strongest National Rally candidates was Thierry Mariani, who was standing in the region that includes Provence, the French Riviera and part of the Alps.
The National Rally had also called for tougher prison sentences and a moratorium on immigration — even though these fall within the powers of the national government, not the regional councils.
Both the Socialist and Greens parties were also trailing in the early polling projections on Sunday, behind Emmanuel Macron’s only four-year-old centrist Republic on the Move party.
This comes as something of a surprise. Macron’s movement had been forecast to do poorly due to its relatively small support base, and amid widespread frustration after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The regional elections were also delayed until 2021 due to COVID-19. The prime minister has scrapped an unpopular curfew, starting Sunday — just in time for the election.