France's National Front seeks to build on gains in second round of regional vote

French voters are going to go to the polls in a second round of regional elections that will test whether the far-right National Front can turn its rising popularity into power.

The anti-immigration party is looking to consolidate gains it made in the first round last week, buoyed by fears over Europe's refugee crisis and the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

The vote is expected to be close, but the National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen is by no means certain to win in any of the 13 regions in today's run-offs.

In the first round she led the way in six of the regions, but her party has traditionally done less well in the second round vote.

Opinion polls suggest the centre-right Republican opposition of former president Nicolas Sarkozy has gained ground in the last week.

Much will depend on left-wing voters after the Socialist party pulled out of the race in the two regions where the FN was best placed and urged its supporters to back the Republicans instead.

Attention will also be focused on the northeast Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine region, where the Socialist candidate rejected his party's call to drop out of the run-offs.

In the first round, the FN won 27.73 per cent of the vote, followed by Mr Sarkozy's Republicans on 26.65 per cent and President Francois Hollande's Socialists with 23.12 per cent.

Marine Le Pen, standing in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, won more than 40 per cent of the vote in her region, as did her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen, who stood in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur in the south.

The FN has never managed any constituency larger than a few small and medium-sized towns.

Winning a region is key to its strategy to try and convince voters it could eventually be trusted to rule the country.