The FN split

Abstract

The question of electoral change in France has received a great deal of attention in the past fifteen years, as evidenced by the volume of literature on French parties and elections. The rise of the FN and its ability to establish itself as a serious competitor against mainstream parties of the moderate right are clearly central to this question. The success of the extreme right has largely contributed to altering the balance of forces within the party system: while electorally irrelevant throughout the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s,1 Le Pen’s party has enjoyed high levels of electoral support over the past decade with an average 15 per cent of the national vote cast in the successive elections of 1995, 1997 and 1998 (see Table 9.1).