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| - The parties of President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen suffered setbacks in the final round of regional polls, the last electoral test before French presidential elections next year. AFP looks at the four key questions raised by the results of Sunday's elections, which were marked by record abstention and the resurgence of traditional parties on the left and right. Before the election, far-right leader Marine Le Pen had been sounding optimistic about her party's prospects as she toured the country to campaign on her favoured themes of security, Islamism and immigration. Polls showed candidates from her National Rally (RN) leading in six out of 13 regions in mainland France in the first round, giving her hopes of winning at least one region for the first time. But pre-poll self-assurance has turned to bitter disappointment: not only did the RN fail to win a region, but RN voters, who can usually be relied on to turn out, also stayed home in a vote marked by a record high abstention rate. Le Pen, 52, faced doubts from within her party about her leadership and electability after her failure at the 2017 presidential election against President Emmanuel Macron. Will the questions return now, and might they encourage rivals, particularly far-right media pundit Eric Zemmour, who is said to be considering a presidential bid? "The momentum's been broken," Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far-right at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, told AFP. Since its sensational victory in parliamentary elections in 2017, it has been mostly downhill for Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) party. After a respectable second-place finish in European elections in 2019, it performed badly in local elections last year and suffered a drubbing in this regional vote, providing more evidence that it has failed to lay down roots. After the party garnered a little over 10 percent in the first round, the satirical weekly Canard Enchaine joked on its front-page last week that it had become "Republic on the Margins." Macron himself has been rising in the polls in recent months, however, and he is the current favourite for the presidential race. "Macron has succeeded in not linking his destiny to the image of his party," Stephane Zumsteeg from the Ipsos polling firm told AFP recently. But though this might be true for the presidential contest, Macron would need a working majority in the next parliament to pass legislation and so the weakness of his party could still haunt him. France's traditional parties of government, the right-wing Republicans and left-wing Socialists, have been overshadowed since their defeat in 2017, but the regional vote has changed this dynamic. All their existing regional leaders in mainland France -- seven on the right and four from the left -- were re-elected. From the Republicans, three potential presidential candidates -- Xavier Bertrand in the Upper France region, Valerie Pecresse from the greater Paris area, and Laurent Wauquiez in Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes -- might use their victories as political springboards. The Socialists are still looking for a charismatic candidate to lead them into next year's polls. Some commentators saw the results as a return of the traditional right-left division in French politics, rather than the faultline of the last four years opposing Macron's centrists and Le Pen's far-right. "The redrawing of the political landscape cast in doubt," read the headline of Le Monde newspaper on Monday. The only thing all politicians agreed on was that the abstention level in the regional vote was shockingly high and a source of concern. Only one in three French voters turned out, a historic low since the start of the current fifth republic in 1958. Many explanations have been suggested, beyond the classic disaffection with politics: the lack of campaigning, poor communication about the stakes, or people simply tuning out from politics after a year of pandemic restrictions. But the trend of rising abstention levels has been visible for years, even for national polls such as the second round of the presidential election in 2017 and the parliamentary vote of the same year. Will the idea of electronic voting from home now gather support? Spokesman Gabriel Attal called last week for "a real cross-party discussion with the all of our political parties", but the right-wing Republicans, who control the Senate, are known to be opposed. adp/sjw/yad
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