Sarkozy party leads in French local elections: exit poll

PARIS (Reuters) - Former president Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP party and their allies led in the first round of French local elections, a TV exit poll showed on Sunday, denying Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front (FN) first place.If confirmed the result would be a setback for Le Pen, who had hoped her anti-immigrant, anti-euro party would emerge top in the first round, boosting her ambitions to win presidential elections set for 2017.The UMP and its partners together secured 29.2 percent of the vote nationally, an exit poll by Ifop showed, ahead of the anti-immigrant, anti-euro FN on 26.3 percent.As expected, President Francois Hollande's ruling Socialists came third in the mid-term election with just 21.4 percent of the vote.(Reporting by Mark John; Editing by Andrew Callus)Join the conversation about this story
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