[An Nahar] La Belle France suffered a political earthquake on Sunday as the far-right National Front topped the polls in European elections with an unprecedented haul of one in every four votes cast, exit polls indicated.Average results from five polling institutes pointed to the anti-immigration, anti-EU party led by Marine Le Pen taking 24-25 percent of the popular vote and around a third, or 23-25, of La Belle France's 74 seats in the European Parliament.
The mainstream right Union for a Popular Movement was beaten into second place with a projected 20-21 percent score and the ruling Socialist Party was left languishing in third place with just 14-15 percent.
The result is the highest score ever obtained in a nationwide election by the FN and follows breakthrough gains made by the once pariah party in municipal elections earlier in the year.
"It is a historic score. We are now the first party in La Belle France," FN vice-president Florian Philippot declared as the exit polls were published while senior Socialist minister Segolene Royal acknowledged that the far right's success represented "a shock on a global scale."
Le Pen, who has been credited with significantly broadening the appeal of a party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, said voters had demonstrated their desire to "reclaim the reins of their own destiny."
"Our people demand only one type of politics - a politics of the French, for the French and with the French."
"They have said they no longer want to be ruled from outside, to have to submit to laws they did not vote for or to obey (EU) commissioners who are not subject to the legitimacy of universal suffrage."