French local elections: Hollande left bruised as Sarkozy and Le Pen triumph

The French right has made large gains in the country’s local elections, handing President François Hollande’s ruling Socialist party its third electoral drubbing in a year and raising fears for the future of the left.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing UMP party, in coalition with centrist allies, took the largest share of seats, wresting control of many traditional leftwing bastions from the Socialists.

But key to the changing political landscape in France was the strong showing for the far-right Front National, which marked a major turning-point as the party established a new grassroots presence across the country.

After winning only two local council seats at the last election in 2011, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration and anti-Europe party was on track to win as many as 90 councillors, cementing the Front National’s transformation from what was once a simple national protest vote to a locally anchored movement that Le Pen hopes to use as a springboard for her presidential bid in 2017.

Although the Front National did not win outright control of any département local council, its percentage score rose sharply from the last local elections.

Le Pen hailed her party’s best result in a local election as a “magnificent success”.

The Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, said: “The very high – too high – score of the far-right represents, more than ever, a challenge to all republicans.”

He said the Front National’s success marked a “lasting upheaval” of the French political landscape and all political parties had to learn lessons from it.

The abstention rate was about 50% in the vote to decide 4,108 local councillors, who have limited powers over roads, schools and social services, but who will shape the political landscape in the runup to further regional elections later this year and the 2017 presidential race.

The resounding election success by the traditional right UMP and its centrist allies catapulted Sarkozy back into the limelight after what was seen as his lacklustre return to politics in September. His party has been beset by debt, allegations of financial scandals and bitter in-fighting in recent months, but its score turned its fortunes around. Sarkozy described his party’s high score as historic and a mark of France’s “massive rejection” of the politics of his successor, Hollande.

Sarkozy’s campaign speeches have been sharply rightwing and openly negative towards the Muslim community to win over votes from the far-right – for example in his argument that school canteens should not offer alternative pork-free menus to children, or that the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, should be banned from universities.

This has irritated some in his own party. But Sarkozy is likely to hail the UMP’s electoral gains as a personal victory for himself and a vindication of his veer to the right. The decisive win for the UMP will comfort his personal ambitions to win the party’s primary contest next year and run for president again in 2017.

Meanwhile, the ruling Socialists, and by extension Hollande and the government, were on course to take a drubbing and lose around 30 of the 61 localdépartements that they currently head. Even traditional bastions of the left, such as the northern Nord area around Lille as well as the Côtes d’Armor in Brittany, which has been held by the left since 1976, fell to the right. This is significant because the Socialists are traditionally a party that has depended on a wide local base.

The results marked the Socialists’ third political battering in a year – following the municipal and European elections – and the party will be forced to try to heal its internal divisions. But Hollande has vowed that there would not be a reshuffle after the local election, nor would he change direction on his reforms, such as the forthcoming review of labour laws. Many feel Hollande has no choice but to continue unpopular belt-tightening reforms that have caused divides in his own party.

The local elections, followed by the regional elections in December, have been seen as a barometer for 2017’s presidential race. Several polls have shown that Le Pen could make into the second-round presidential runoff vote in 2017, knocking out either the left or right.

Most pollsters agree that Le Pen could never gain enough votes in the final round to win the presidency. But her potential presence in a runoff has worried the mainstream left and right. Socialists are keen to avoid their candidate being knocked out, as happened when Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out Lionel Jospin in 2002.