French conservatives win local elections by wide margin

The far-right National Front made only limited gains in French local elections won by a wide margin on Sunday by ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives and their centrist allies.

Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movemenet (UMP) and its allies will take over two-thirds of the 102 local departements, exit polls for the second round of voting showed, up from 41 now, in a boost for the former president, whose recent comeback at the helm of the UMP is challenged within the party.

"The French people have massively rejected the policies of [President] François Hollande and his government," he told party supporters. "The time for change is now."

Hollande's Socialist Party was set to lose half of the 61 departements it held before the election, exit polls showed. The Socialists, which control the majority of the departments, are deeply unpopular after the government's failure to turn around France's economy. 

The anti-immigrant National Front has seen 62 of its candidates elected, Interior Ministry data showed with 96 percent of the 4,108 local council seats accounted for.

The FN, which took a quarter of the vote in the first round last week, was not expected to win any councils on Sunday, in part because mainstream voters combined to keep it out of power in second-round runoffs, AFP said.

However, it won dozens of individual seats across the country, leading Le Pen to hail a "magnificent success" that showed it was "a powerful force" in many local areas.

"These elections are a crucial step for the patriot movement on its road to power," Le Pen said.

The FN, which topped last year's European Parliament elections in France, is aiming to make more progress in regional polls in December. Surveys see Le Pen likely to make it to the second round of the presidential election in 2017, but not win.

In total, 4,108 councilors with limited powers over roads, schools and social services were elected in the two rounds of local elections.

The complex voting system, in which a duo of councilors is elected per constituency, who then elect the presidents of 98 "departement" councils next Thursday, means it will take time to form an exact picture of how many councils each party has won.

Wire services