French voters appeared equally divided between right and left Sunday in the first round of municipal elections, while the far right, with heady scores in numerous towns, moved into position as arbiter.
Projections by the CSA firm showed the Socialist and Communist parties getting 42.5 percent of the vote, compared to 43.4 percent for the governing coalition of conservatives and centrists.While the extreme right received just 7.2 percent, the anti-immigrant National Front party won an estimated 30 percent in the eastern city of Mulhouse, 22 percent in the southern port of Marseille and 32.5 percent in Tourcoing in the north.
Bruno Megret, the party's No. 2 man, won an estimated 43 percent of the vote in Vitrolles, an industrial town outside Marseille.
The early results indicated the National Front could help decide next Sunday's runoffs in numerous towns and cities where no one candidate received a majority.
The governing conservatives apparently failed to capitalize on their win in presidential elections five weeks ago. The right also controls the prime minister's office, the Senate, the National Assembly, regional councils and 18 of France's 35 largest cities.
Sunday's first-round vote is unique in Europe: no other country chooses so many representatives - more than half a million - in so many towns and cities: 36,772 of them. Mayors, elected every six years, are formally named by June 25.
Voter turnout, at 69 percent, was the lowest since World War II.
At a voting station in southern Paris, police had to intervene Sunday after extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen became involved in a confrontation with an anti-fascist group picketing as he voted. There were no injuries or arrests.
Le Pen, leader of the National Front, was hoping to capitalize on momentum from the presidential race, in which he won a record 15 percent vote. His party put forward some 25,000 candidates in 477 towns.
Conservative President Jacques Chirac, elected May 7, voted in Sarran in central France, where his wife Bernadette is a municipal councilor seeking re-election.
His Socialist predecessor, 78-year-old Francois Mitterrand, voted in his hometown of Chateau-Chinon in southwest France.
Polls show that the mayor is the most important elected official in the lives of most French - the person who determines whether a new lamp post goes up or whether the town gets a refurbished day care center.