Only one world to describe the results: triumph for the Left, disaster for the Right.
Of the 22 French regions, the Right had yesterday 14 regions, the Left 8 regions.
Today, the Left has 20 regions, the Right 1 (we don't have the Results of Corsica yet).
NOBODY could have imagined these results 8 days ago, not even yesterday. After the first round last week, it was clear that the Left would gain 5 or 6 regions, but they won every single one except Alsace.
Incredible! Stunning! Extraordinary!
National results: Left (Socialists + governemental Communists + Green): 49%, the Right: 36%, the far-right FN: 15%
Remember that you cannot add 36 to 15 and say the Right has a majority, because the FN doesn't steal votes that clearly from the Right, it also steals votes from the Communist Party, and more than half of the voters wouldn't vote if the FN wasn't in the runoff.
It is a gigantic blow to Prime Minister Raffarin (who will perhaps be fired as early as this month), to the governement and to President Chirac. The Minister of the Interior, the ambitious Nicolas Sarkosy, had campagined heavily this week, so he is also victim of these results.
The Left kept all of its 8 previous regions, including Ile de France, the Paris region, that was supposed to be hotly contested, and where it won 50% to 39%.
It also kept Provence -Alpes-Cotes d'Azur (Marseille + Nice) the third region of France, 45% to 33% (the FN got 20%, in its best region).
The Left gained the second region of France: Rhones Alpes (Lyon) 48% to 36%. It gained Bretagne 58% to 41%. It gained Poitou-Charentes, the region that Raffarin presided for 14 years, 54% to 33% (a very elegant woman won there, Ségolène Royal, i'm sure we'll here of her in 3 years). The Left gained Langeudoc-Roussilon, Bourgogne, etc... All by huge margins.
Even right-wing strongholds like Normandy or Lorraine fell to the Left. Stunning really.
All of the ministers of the governement that were candidates (and there were many) lost.
Of course, the governement willr emain in the hands of the UMP until 2007, but they are very weakened now, and the Left that was sleeping for the past 2 years can finally wake up and prepare itself for the next battle.
The spin is: the Left is saying that the electors sanctionned the injust reforms of the Right, the Right answers that yes we lost, but it's because we didn't explain our reforms well enough to the population, and that we will continue what we are doing (to what the Green leader answered: "Raffarin is autistic, he hasn't understood anything that happened tonight")