FRANCE’S far-right National Front (FN) party rode a wave of fear over immigration and terrorism to storm to a commanding position in the first round of voting in the country’s high-stakes regional elections Sunday.

    The anti-immigration party led by Marine Le Pen scored 30.6 percent of the vote nationally, an exit poll showed, and now looks on course to take control of at least one French region for the first time in its history once the second round of voting takes place a week from now.

    The party came ahead of both former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Republicans (formerly the UMP), which earned 27 percent, and President Francois Hollande’s Socialists, with 22.7 percent, according to the exit poll.

    In the first national vote since Islamic State group terrorists killed 130 people in a wave of attacks across Paris on Nov. 13, the FN looked set to come first in at least six out of 13 regions, according to exit polls.

    However, it was in the regions of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, where Le Pen herself is running, and Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur, where her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen topped the polls, that the FN had its best night.

    Exit polls showed the FN gaining more than 40 percent in the two regions, in the north and south of the country respectively, well ahead of rival parties.

    The FN had already been predicted to do well in Sunday’s regional elections, spurred by anti-immigration sentiment amid an influx of refugees into Europe in recent months — a particularly emotional issue in the Calais region where many migrants have temporarily settled while attempting to enter the U.K.(SD-Agencies)