French Socialists win key by-election

According to local authorities, Socialist Frederic Barbier (pictured above) won 51.4 percent of the runoff vote in the eastern French region of Doubs on Sunday, in a close race against National Front (FN) candidate Sophie Montel.

"I'm not rejoicing, I am not boasting," Barbier told his supporters, calling on the post-attacks "spirit of national unity" to continue.

Ahead of Sunday's by-election, France's FN had hoped to take a seat from the Socialists and send Montel to Paris as the party's third member of the lower house.

In the first round of the Doubs by-election on February 1 - called after Socialist lawmaker Pierre Moscovici left for Brussels to take office as European commissioner for economic affairs - the 45-year-old came in first with close to one-third of the vote.

Hollande's approval rating up

Since Hollande took office in May 2012, France has seen 13 by-elections, none of which have been won by the Socialists. Over the last three years, the party has been relentlessly undermined by high unemployment and stagnant growth in France.

By the time Paris was hit by deadly Islamist attacks last month, during which three gunmen killed 17 people, Hollande had become the most unpopular president in modern French history.

FN members say the killings, by men who practiced an extreme form of Islam, proves their case that too much migration is a threat to France. Muslim migrants have increasingly sought protection in the face of the right-wing rhetoric and threats of physical violence.

An opinion poll carried out by the Ifop polling company 10 days after the attacks, however, showed that Hollande's widely-praised handling of the crisis and call for unity helped his approval rating double - to 40 percent.

ksb/cmk (AFP, Reuters)