By ROBERT MARQUAND [Christian Science Monitor] – What is striking [in the French elections Sunday] is the continued rise of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front and the relative scarcity of Mr. Sarkozy’s ruling party in an election notable for low turnout even though it is the last national poll before presidential elections next spring.

The French vote was round 2 for some 100 districts, and Sarkozy’s UMP party was routed, in some regions losing half its traditional totals, while the National Front in some places scored 40 percent.

Ms. Le Pen, tall and telegenic, has taken control and is altering the image of Europe’s premier far-right party founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, historically known as anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant. She is moving to institutionalize the National Front in the mind of French voters by abandoning the old screeds against Jews, and including gays, while at the same time picking up on a general mainstream worry about Muslims.

“Marine Le Pen is beginning to transform the National Front from a protest party into a political alternative,” argued Stéphane Rozès at the French graduate school Sciences Po on Monday…

If the French vote tracks a slow shift in the national electorate toward middle-class conservatism, the German vote appears to be shaped more by immediate dynamics: the leaking Japan reactors, the recent resignation of Merkel’s ostensible successor, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg who was caught for plagiarizing his doctoral thesis, and Germany’s abstention at the United Nations on the intervention in Libya.

Continued at the Christian Science Monitor | More Chronicle & Notices.