The first round of France’s local elections on Sunday saw the extreme-right National Front party (FN) of Marine Le Pen winning historical levels of support in a number of towns.
Sunday’s municipal elections were the first of two rounds that will see some 36,000 new mayors elected in both small and major cities such as Paris, Lyon and Marseille.
Early estimates showed FN candidates leading in the eastern town of Forbach and the southern towns of Frejus, Avignon, Perpignan, Villeneuve-sur-Lot and Beziers, putting the party in pole position for the second round of voting on March 30th.
Under municipal election rules in France, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round.
In the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, Le Pen’s party’s candidate Steeve Briois took a majority of the vote at 50.26 percent, making him the outright winner and mayor.
Nationwide, the FN scored seven percent of the vote, according to pollster BVA – a high national tally, given that it only fielded candidates in some 600 of France's total 36,000 municipalities.
Applauding what she said was "an exceptional vintage for the FN", Marine Le Pen -- head of the anti-immigration, anti-EU party -- said the polls marked the "end of the bipolarisation of the political scene".
French President François Hollande’s ruling Socialists, together with other left-wing allies, took a 43 percent share of the vote nationwide, a further confirmation of Hollande’s record-low popularity after failing to rein in unemployment in the euro zone's second largest economy.
Right-wing parties, including the main opposition UMP party but not the FN, secured 48 percent.
The Socialist government immediately responded to the surge of the extreme right.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault made a television appeal for "all democratic forces" to close ranks against FN candidates next week.
"Wherever the FN is in a position to win the second round, all who support democracy and the Republic have a duty to prevent them," Ayrault said, calling on voters to turn out in greater numbers than for the first round.
Turnout at the first round was dismally low at around 38 percent, a record for French municipal elections.
Although the Jewish community’s umbrella representative group, CRIF, didn’t yet officially react on Monday to the extreme-right strong showing, some Jewish leaders have already expressed concern over the growing climate of intolerance in the country, and a trend that sees the political extreme left connect with the extreme right over a common hatred of Jews.
In an interview with The Algemeiner, Yonathan Arfi, Vice-President of CRIF said that Marine Le Pen’s National Front is categorized clearly as an extreme right party, but in the last few years it has been able to attract voters who previously used to vote for the extreme left.”
“What is very worrying for us is when anti-Semitism makes the link between extreme left and extreme right,” he said, referring to a major Paris rally earlier this year where marchers chanted “Jew, France is not for you.” At the demonstration “there were people from the extreme right mainly but some people of the extreme left as well,” Arfi said.
“The Jewish community has always clearly expressed that they insist people do not vote for the National Front. For the last 40 years it has been the position of the world Jewish community and it will continue, of course, this year,” Arfi said.
In an interview in December, CRIF President Roger Cukierman stressed the fact that FN leader Marine Le Pen had never distanced herself from controversial statements made by her father who once called the Nazi gas chambers “a detail of the history of World War II.”
“Despite the perfectly refined language of Marine Le Pen, behind the National Front stand all the anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers,” Cukierman said.
Another test of the FN’s strength will be the European Parliament elections in May due to the fact it is nationwide and is more representative.
European elections polls are now showing the National Front with some 18-24% of the vote. “For sure they will have more seats then they have (now) … The only question now is if the National Front will have the most seats (among the) other parties in France,’’ Arfi added.