French far-right National Front, Le Pen, come up mostly empty in regional elections

The big winner in French regional elections on Sunday was the center-right Republicans, who are projected to control of seven of France's 13 provinces, including the region that contains Paris, while the Socialists of President Francois Hollande will win five and an unaffiliated nationalist will take the reins in Corsica. The Socialists had won all but one region in the last elections in 2010. Shut out by French voters in Sunday's second round was the far-right National Front, the top vote-getter in last week's first round of balloting.

Voter turnout was up from the first round, and also from the second round in 2010. "Tonight has actually shown that a National Front presence in the second round still mobilizes a majority to get out and vote against it," Charles Lichfield, a France analyst at the Eurasia consulting firm, told The Wall Street Journal.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen and her popular niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, each lost in their respective regions to the center-right candidates — rather than split the vote, the Socialists withdrew their candidates in those races and urged their voters to support the Republican. "Here we stopped the progression of the National Front," said Xavier Bertrand, who beat Marine Le Pen in the Nord-Pas de Calais region by 15 percentage points. Le Pen said her party had been beaten by the political elite. "It's not the left and the right anymore, its globalists and patriots," she said. "This distinction will be the grand distinction of the presidential elections."

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Analysts said the election, in which the National Front received about 30 percent of the overall vote, actually boosts Le Pen's prospects before the 2017 presidential election, in which she is expected to run. "Tonight, there should be no relief, no triumphalism and no victory message," said Prime Minister Manuel Valls: "The danger of the far right has not been ruled out."