French regional election blows 2022 presidential race wide open as voters shun polls

Results from French regional elections at the weekend have highlighted lacklustre support for President Emmanuel Macron’s party, and also the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, who were predicted to do well.

In a vote characterised by poor voter-turnout, with a 70 per cent abstention rate, the centre-right, Les Republicains, made a comeback according to exit-polls.

An IPSOS exit poll showed Les Republicains winning just over 27 per cent of the national vote, ahead of the far right on a little more than 19 per cent. Mr Macron’s La Republique en Marche won just over 11 per cent.

France’s Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, said the results of the first round of regional elections were a failure for Macron’s party, La Republique En Marche, when asked about them on France 2 television.

He added that the low turnout was a “defeat for all of us… abstention is a message. The French people are telling politicians they do not trust them.”

Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale also did worse than expected. Pre-election surveys showed RN leading in a many as six of France’s regions ahead of the weekend, but exit polls showed her only leading in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region in the first round.

She described the low voter turnout as a “civic disaster”. Ms Le Pen said this was due to mistrust of an electoral system which left voters feeling that “nothing can change, that everything has been confiscated”.

Victory in one of the French regions would be a first for the far-right and herald the broader normalisation of the party in French politics.

French regional elections are often seen as a bellwether for how political parties will fair in the Presidential elections.

Fourteen French regions – 12 on the mainland plus Guadeloupe in the Antilles and La Réunion island in the Indian Ocean – choose from a total of 19,084 candidates to fill 1,757 regional council seats.

The regional elections were delayed for three months due to the pandemic. Candidates getting more than 10 percent of the votes in the first round face a run-off to be held on June 27. Following Sunday’s first-round vote, parties have until Tuesday morning to build alliances and register their lists of candidates for the second round.

Mr Darmanin said it was too early to draw conclusions regarding the Presidential elections scheduled to take place in 2022.

Additional reporting by agencies