France could see the comeback of the far right party National Front in the regional councils, as per the calculations of the first round of voting on Sunday. The party has won 28% of the votes in the first round of voting.
Marine Le Pen's party, National Front, was just ahead in two and leading by a bigger margin in four regions out of 13 after the first phase.
Historically, the party has performed well during the first phase but not so much in the latter as the other parties have formed coalitions to outdo the hardline National Front.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy's moderate right party, Republicains, was in the second place while Socialist bloc, to which President Francis Hollande belongs was pushed back to third place.
Marine le Pen, President of the National Front party, said that her's was "the only party that can reconquer the lost territories of the republic, of Calais, where we won 50 percent of the votes, or of the suburbs."
Migrants reach Calais hoping to reach Britain while the suburbs have a significant number of Muslims residing there.
She was quoted by The New York Times as saying that the National Front "is the only party to defend an authentically French republic," and dedicated to "the preservation of our way of life."
The second round of voting is to be held the coming Sunday, 12 December.
The former President Sarkozy refused to join any other party, saying that it would withdraw, toppling the old strategy of forming alliances.
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the head of the Socialist Party, said, "candidates would withdraw from the elections in the two regions where the National Front did best — the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region in northeastern France and the Provence-Alpes-Côte-Azur region in the south — and that elsewhere it would join with other parties."
"The party of the extreme right threatens many regions of France," Cambadélis said.
He added, "The left is, then, the last rampart of Republican France against the xenophobic extreme right."
