About this election
The 2015 French regional elections, held on 6 and 13 December 2015, were the first to use France's redrawn map of thirteen larger metropolitan regions, created by a 2014–2015 reform that merged the previous twenty-two. Held just three weeks after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the elections produced a first-round shock — the Front National topped the national vote — but ended, after a mobilisation of mainstream voters in the run-off, with the far right failing to win a single region.
Regional councillors are elected by a two-round, semi-proportional list system. Lists winning an absolute majority in the first round are elected outright; otherwise lists above 10% advance to the run-off (and those between 5% and 10% may merge with a qualifying list). In the second round the list with the most votes receives a bonus of one-quarter of the seats, with the remainder distributed proportionally among all lists above 5% — a design that guarantees the winning list a working majority in the regional council while preserving opposition representation.
The elections took place amid acute national tension. The attacks of 13 November 2015 had placed France under a state of emergency, sharpening debate over security, immigration and national identity — terrain favourable to Marine Le Pen's Front National. The governing Socialists were deeply unpopular under François Hollande, while the centre-right, now branded Les Républicains under Nicolas Sarkozy, hoped to consolidate ahead of the 2017 presidential election.
In the first round the Front National led nationally with 27.73%, ahead of the Republicans-led right on 26.65% and the Socialist-led left on 23.12%; the party topped the poll in around six of the thirteen regions, including the north and the Mediterranean south-east. The second round, however, told a different story. Faced with the prospect of FN regional presidents, the Socialists withdrew their lists in some regions to block the far right, and mainstream voters turned out in greater numbers — second-round turnout rose to 58.44%, from 49.91% in the first. The result: Les Républicains and their allies won seven regions, the Socialist-led left won five, and the Front National won none. In Corsica, regionalist and nationalist forces won control for the first time.
The "republican front" had held, but the FN's first-place finish and record vote — its strongest result in any nationwide election to that point — signalled the depth of its advance and foreshadowed Marine Le Pen's run to the 2017 presidential run-off. For the centre-right the seven-region haul was a springboard into 2017; for the Socialists, holding five regions only partly masked a broader decline. The new thirteen-region map became the durable framework for French regional government.
The map of regional control showed a familiar divide: Les Républicains dominated the north (Hauts-de-France, won by Xavier Bertrand after the FN's first-round lead), the east (Grand Est), the Paris region (Île-de-France, won by Valérie Pécresse), Normandy, the Pays de la Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (where Christian Estrosi blocked Marion Maréchal-Le Pen). The Socialist-led left held the south-west and centre — Occitanie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bretagne, Centre-Val de Loire and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté — while Corsica went to its nationalists.
Official results from the French Ministry of the Interior — interieur.gouv.fr. The map shows the bloc that won control of each region after the second round.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.