French voters handed President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling centre-right coalition a stinging setback in Sunday's first round of regional elections, France 2 television reported, according to dpa. According to early estimates by the TNS Sofres institute, the opposition Socialists received 30 per cent of the vote, against 26.7 per cent for Sarkozy's UMP party. When campaigning for the elections began earlier this year, polls showed the UMP leading the Socialists by 10 per cent. But the UMP carried out a disastrous campaign, with a number of embarrassing gaffes that made national headlines. These included two right-wing mayors falsely accusing a black Socialist candidate of being a "hardened repeat criminal," and the UMP head of the Senate saying that a white Protestant Frenchman would be better suited to head the government's anti-discrimination authority than a descendant of North African immigrants. In addition, even as France slowly emerged from the economic crisis, unemployment continued to rise, reaching 10 per cent for mainland France and its four overseas regions. As a result, surveys showed that a large majority of the French had lost confidence in the economic policies put in place by Sarkozy and his government. It remains to be seen if the UMP and its allies will be able to hold on to the only two of France's 26 regions they govern, Alsace and Corsica. If Sarkozy and his allies are shut out next Sunday, it could throw doubt on his candidacy for the 2012 presidential elections. In other results, the environmentalist Europe Ecologie was credited with 12.3 per cent of the vote, while the anti-immigration National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen received an estimated 12 per cent. More important for next Sunday's second round is that the various parties of the French left drew an estimated 50.5 per cent. Negotiations for slate-building for the second round among the various left-wing parties was to begin later Sunday. If the estimates are confirmed, the election represents a triumph for Socialist Party head Martine Aubry. The party was badly divided when Aubry became party leader in November 2008, and so unpopular that in the 2009 European Parliament elections the Socialists received only 16.5 per cent of the vote. Sunday's vote, Aubry said, was "a denial of a divided France" created by Sarkozy and represented one of the highest scores ever recorded by the French left. Voter participation was estimated at about 48 per cent of France's 44 million registered voters, a record low for the election. In 2004, 60 per cent of registered voters had gone to the polls. In 1998, participation had been 58 per cent. For the second round, all slates of candidates receiving more than 10 per cent of the vote are eligible to square off on March 21.
