France’s centrist party decimated in elections

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party was decimated in this weekend’s regional elections and Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration far-right party failed, throwing a hitch into expectations that the presidential race in 10 months will be a showdown between the two politicians.

A new script could emerge. The results of Sunday’s voting bolstered hopes of the mainstream conservative right, in disarray for years with a series of internal crises, to pose a serious challenge to both Macron and Le Pen in the presidential election in April 2022.

French politics had long been dominated by the Socialists and Gaullist conservatives, but both forces were derailed by electoral losses and leadership crises. The Republicans party has been out of power since then-President Nicolas Sarkozy lost a reelection bid in 2012. Unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande, who did not seek a second term, was supplanted by Macron, his economy minister, who swept from the wings to run in 2017 with a newly created party — and faced off against Le Pen.

The regional election results underlined the problems of Macron’s young Republic on the Move party, which had hoped to establish a regional foothold for the first time but failed to excite voters. During the last regional elections Macron’s party didn’t yet exist.

The regional map remained unchanged after Sunday’s voting, with the mainstream right holding onto its seven regions and the Socialists keeping their five, with all incumbents re-elected.