Besançon, France--French President Francois Hollande's new-found popularity after the Paris attacks faced its first major test Sunday as a member of his ruling Socialist party battled against a far-right National Front candidate in a tense by-election.
The first round of the poll last Sunday in the eastern Doubs district -- called after Socialist lawmaker Pierre Moscovici left for Brussels to take office as Economic Affairs Commissioner -- saw FN candidate Sophie Montel come first with close to a third of the vote.
The Socialist Frederic Barbier, 54, came second and the main opposition UMP candidate was knocked out of the race.
If she wins Sunday's decisive second round, Montel, 45, will be the third far-right lawmaker to sit in France's lower house National Assembly.
UMP leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy warned this week there was a real risk of the National Front taking power at a national level in the future.
His party nevertheless called on its supporters to abstain from voting for either candidate on Sunday, and all eyes will be on whether the 60.5 percent of voters who abstained last weekend will turn out this time round.
In Pont-de-Roide, a small town in Doubs, residents streamed to the council to cast their vote, waiting in line under a grey sky, in bitter cold.
The result, which is expected to be known early Sunday evening, will be a test for Hollande's party and for the president himself.
Since he came to power in May 2012, there have been 13 by-elections and the ruling Socialist party has won none of them as the French become steadily more exasperated with record high unemployment and near zero economic growth.
Until the deadly Paris attacks last month, Hollande was rated so low in opinion polls that he became the most unpopular president in modern French history.
But his widely-praised handling of the January 7-9 Islamist killings that left 17 people dead boosted his image and he has now shot back up in the ratings.
An opinion poll carried out by the Ifop polling company 10 days after the attacks showed Hollande's ratings had doubled to 40 percent.
But official figures published late last month showed unemployment hit a new record in December, casting a cloud on this new-found popularity that the Doubs by-election will further challenge.
AFP
