France's National Front scored its best ever local election result, but its hopes for power remain thwarted by widespread distaste for its anti-immigration policies and an election system that allows voters to block it from office, reports Reuters.
The far-right FN won one in four votes in the first round of local elections on March 22, its highest score ever. In the second round last Sunday, it secured 62 councillors in 14 departmental assemblies, less than 2 percent of councillors nationwide but a big jump from the single councillor it had before.
Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls acknowledged the "lasting upheaval" the FN had brought to an electoral landscape dominated for decades by a center-right and a centre-left party.
But FN leader Marine Le Pen had hoped to top the party's unprecedented victory in last year's EU elections and the strong showing in the first round of the local elections with another milestone: obtaining control of one or two departments. That did not happen.
"(The FN) is undeniably spreading and putting down roots," said Ipsos pollsters' analyst Jérôme Fourquet. "It's just maybe at a slightly less spectacular pace than some had hoped or predicted."
Like other fringe parties in Europe, the FN has attracted voters angry with rampant unemployment and a stagnant economy and disillusioned with mainstream politicians such as President François Hollande, who is deeply unpopular.
It has proven particularly popular in the southeast of France and in the unemployment-ridden northeast.
Le Pen blamed her party's failure to win any department on election rules that she said were "made to prevent the FN, and therefore its voters, millions of French people, from having elected officials".