THE DECLINE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY has been accompanied in tandem by the efflorescence of the far right. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s impressive showing in 2002 came as a brutal shock to mainstream opinion in France; his daughter’s first-round success 2017 is widely perceived to be inevitable. Beginning with the 2012 election, in which Marine Le Pen won the highest ever score for a FN candidate in a presidential race, the party has gone from success to success: in both the European elections of 2014 and departmental elections the year after the FN won the largest share of first-round votes, in each case about a quarter of the electorate. Although the Front’s isolation has largely prevented it from converting this support into political power, as alliances between the other parties traditionally result in FN candidates being defeated in runoffs, mounting signs indicate that this “glass ceiling” may be fragile.
Founded in 1972 out of a hodge-podge of far-right and neo-fascist groups seeking a parliamentary road to power, the FN first tasted electoral success in 1983, when the party won the mayoralty of Dreux, to the west of Paris, and saw ten municipal councilors elected. Its real breakthrough came three years later, in the wake of a law introducing a measure of proportionality in legislative elections; in 1986, thirty-five MPs and six regional presidents were elected on FN lists, with almost 10 percent of the vote in legislative and regional elections held on the same day.
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