France's ruling Socialist Party has suffered humiliating losses in a local vote marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front and the historic election of a first female mayor of Paris.
On a day dubbed "Black Sunday" by one Socialist lawmaker, the National Front (FN) won control of at least eight towns and was on track to claim 1,200 municipal council seats nationwide, its best ever showing at the grassroots level of French politics.
It was also a night to savour for France's main opposition, the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
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The party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy performed strongly across the country, seizing control of a string of towns and cities, including some once considered bastions of the left.
In a rare consolation for President Francois Hollande's party, the Socialists held on to control of Paris, where Anne Hidalgo, 54, will become the first female mayor of the French capital after a victory that was far more comfortable than anyone had expected.
But Limoges, a town that had been run by the left for 102 years, fell to the UMP, as did Toulouse, the Champagne capital Reims and Saint Etienne, as well as dozens of other smaller urban centres.
"It has been a black Sunday," said Socialist deputy Jean-Christophe Cambadelis.
Candidates backed by Marine Le Pen's FN secured the mayor's seat in the mid-sized southern towns of Beziers and Frejus and six smaller towns, adding to its first-round victory in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont.
"We have moved onto a new level," Le Pen claimed. "There is now a third major political force in our country."
The historic festival city of Avignon, where the FN had headed the first round vote, remained under left-wing control and Le Pen's party also failed to win the northeastern town of Forbach and the southern city of Perpignan, both of which had been amongst their top objectives.
An OpinionWay poll for Le Figaro suggested the UMP and its allies had taken 45 per cent of the votes cast nationwide in municipalities of more than 1,000 residents, while the Socialists and other left-wing parties took 43 per cent and the FN, which was only standing in a small number of communes, registered seven per cent.
