The French people voted on Sunday in runoffs for regional elections that will show whether the far-right National Front (FN) can turn popularity into power. Marine Le Pen's party achieved a breakthrough last week by taking the lead in the first round of the vote, drawing strength from fears over Europe's refugee crisis and the Islamic State militant attacks that killed 130 people in Paris a month ago.
"For me, she is going to win. Maybe it will make all those politicians stop and think," said voter Evelyne Risselin in Le Pen's electoral home base Henin-Beaumont in northern France.
But the anti-immigrant, anti-European Union FN was by no means certain to take any of the 13 regions.
The outcome will depend largely on what left-wing voters will do after the ruling Socialist party withdrew from the race in the two regions where the FN was best placed - the north where Le Pen is a candidate and the south-east where her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen is running.
The Socialists urged their supporters to back Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives in those two constituencies to keep the FN out of power, and a series of opinion polls have shown that voters might well be heeding that call.
"Voters should not be treated like children, nor be terrorised," a smiling Marine Le Pen told reporters after casting her vote in Henin-Beaumont.
Voter turnout stood at 19.59 percent at midday compared 16.27 percent at the same time in the first round last week, when full-day turnout totalled 49.91 percent.
The Socialists fear that some of their supporters might stay home rather than go and vote for the party of Sarkozy, who is widely despised by the left. Just under one in two registered voters turned up at the polling stations last week.
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