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In Wake Of Paris Attacks, French Nationalists Win Big In Regional Elections

Scott Greer Contributor
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The National Front is set to have one of its biggest electoral victories ever after coming out on top in the opening round of France’s regional elections Sunday.

The nationalist party is set to win nearly 30 percent of the vote nationally, according to BBC, and many of its high-profile figures won with solid majorities in their respective regions. National Front’s charismatic leader Marine Le Pen, for instance, is estimated to come out as the top candidate in the northern Nord-Pas-De-Calais-Picardie region with 40 percent of the vote. The party also came out ahead in five other regions out of a total of 13.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right Republicans came in second place nationally, with the Socialist Party — the party of the current President Francois Hollande — coming in a disappointing third place.

Le Pen called the results “magnificent” and declared her movement “without contest the first party of France.”

The party has gained unprecedented support in large part due to its strong opposition to immigration and criticism of Islam. After the November 13 Paris terror attacks left 130 Frenchmen dead, it was predicted that more citizens in the country would gravitate to the National Front’s message.

Shortly after the attacks, Le Pen penned an op-ed for Time magazine laying out her party’s plan for stopping similar attacks in the future.

“We must reinvest in our police forces, our border security, our military. We must reverse a decade of disastrous budgetary decisions. We must reclaim our national borders permanently and rescind French citizenship to dual-national jihadists because they do not deserve to be considered French. We must close radical mosques, which are a site of hate. We must stop welcoming thousands of migrants and regain our national sovereignty,” she wrote back in November.

The second round of elections are scheduled for December 13. Sarkozy has so far refused to entertain any possibility of an alliance with the Socialists in a bid to keep the Front National out of regional councils.

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