Marine Le Pen and her Front National (FN) party are together riding a cresting wave of support in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks. Latest polling shows the FN is on course to govern two – and possibly three – French regions for the first time. Ms. Le Pen is now the overwhelming favourite to capture north-western France and the Marseille-Nice region in elections set for the next two weekends, according to polls published yesterday. Such is the backing for the party that it might harvest as many votes as its conservative and centrist rivals combined. The FN is also running neck-and-neck with Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right party, Les Républicains, in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region in eastern France. A series of regional polls by BVA on Sunday, and published by the Independent, showed the FN gaining between 4 and 7 per cent compared to similar polls before the terrorist assault on Paris. The FN has never won a regional government before. The regional elections are the first political test for French President Francois Hollande since the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. With the country reeling from that violence and grappling with border controls, FN candidates are showing “a significant increase” in support across the country, BVA