AP mapping shows France's poorest regions backing Le Pen's party as support for Macron wanes

PARIS (AP) — The date was May 7, 2017. Addressing cheering supporters, the newly elected leader of France, Emmanuel Macron, made a promise that now, in his waning 18 months as president, lies in tatters.

The rival that Macron defeated that day, Marine Le Pen, had secured 10,638,475 votes. They were nowhere near enough for the far-right leader to win. But they were too numerous for Macron to ignore, a best-ever watershed at the ballot box for Le Pen’s once-ostracized National Front party that she inherited from her Holocaust-denying father.

Gazing out over a sea of French flags, Macron acknowledged “anger” and “distress” that he said motivated Le Pen voters. He pledged to do everything to win them over, “so they no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes.”

But since then, Le Pen's us-against-them nativist politics targeting immigrants, Muslims and the European Union have made millions more converts. Her National Rally party, rebranded in 2018 to broaden its appeal and shed its sulfurous links to her dad, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has become the largest in parliament and has never appeared closer to power, with the next presidential and legislative elections scheduled in 2027.

Many factors explain why Le Pen has gone from strength to strength. Some are intrinsic: The 57-year-old cat-loving mother of three is more polished and popular than her gruff ex-paratrooper father who had multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and for downplaying Nazi atrocities in World War II. He died in January.

Others are external and include voter disgruntlement over wealth inequality that has worsened significantly under Macron.

An additional 1.2 million people have fallen below the poverty threshold in the world’s seventh-largest economy since the 2017 election and 2022 reelection of France's pro-business president.

The former investment banker slashed business taxes and watered down a wealth tax to boost France's allure for investment. Left-wing critics labeled Macron "president of the rich.”

The poverty rate was 13.8% when Macron took power and had barely shifted during the previous presidency of François Hollande, a Socialist.

By 2023, into Macron's second term and the most recent year with official data from the French national statistics agency, the poverty rate had ballooned to 15.4%, which is its highest level in nearly 30 years of measurements.

The following year, National Rally triumphed in French voting for the European Parliament. So heavy was the defeat for his centrist camp that Macron stunned France by then dissolving the National Assembly.

Again, National Rally surged in the ensuing legislative election. It didn't come close to winning a majority — no party did. But with 123 of the 577 lawmakers, National Rally vaulted past all other parties and surpassed its previous best of 89 legislators elected in 2022.

Put bluntly: the worse off France becomes, the better National Rally seems to fare.

Mapping by The Associated Press both of poverty in France and of the Le Pen vote in the four French legislative elections since she took over her father's party in 2011 show how both have grown.

The maps show particularly evident progress by National Rally in some of France’s poorest regions, especially in what have become National Rally strongholds: the deindustrialized northeast of France and along its Mediterranean coast.

Region-by-region poverty rates were mapped through 2021, beyond which the national statistics agency INSEE doesn't have data for all 96 of mainland France's regions. The AP mapped support for the National Front and then National Rally by using the party's showing in the first rounds of voting in legislative elections in 2012, 2017, 2022 and 2024.

“We clearly see that the National Rally vote is very strongly correlated with issues of poverty, of difficulties with social mobility" and with voters “who are most pessimistic about the future of their children or their personal situation,” said Luc Rouban, a senior researcher at Paris' elite Sciences Po school of political sciences who studies the party.

François Ouzilleau, who stood for Macron's party in the 2022 legislative election and lost to a National Rally winner in his district in Normandy west of Paris, puts it more simply.

“It feeds off anger and people's problems," he said.

But poverty is only part of the Le Pen success story and her appeal isn't limited to voters who struggle to make ends meet. Combating immigration, the party's bread and butter since its foundation, remains a central plank of Le Pen-ism.

Rouban sees National Rally similarities with the playbook of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They're doing Trump-ism à la française,” he said. “They say, ‘We’re wary of the justice system,' like Trump. ‘We’re taking back control of our national borders,' like Trump."

The party says that its proposals to slash France's spending on migrants and on the EU and to redirect money to people's pockets by reducing the costs of energy and other necessities appeal to voters in financial need.

“The French have clearly understood that the ones defending the purchasing power of the working and middle classes are the National Rally," Laure Lavalette, a parliamentary spokesperson for the party, told the AP.

Lavalette represents the southern Var region, one of National Rally's new strongholds as Macron's popularity has plummeted.

In legislative elections that followed his election in 2017, Le Pen's party failed to win any seats in Var. But after Macron's reelection in 2022, National Rally grabbed seven of Var's eight seats and repeated that feat in 2024.

Poverty rates in the Var have long surpassed the national average, the AP's mapping shows.

Lavalette says that making ends meet is “crazy difficult" for some of her constituents and that “some tell me that they have to chose between eating or heating."

The 2024 legislative election produced a fractured parliament with fragile minority governments collapsing one after the other. To untangle that knot, Macron could have dissolved the National Assembly again this year, triggering a new election.

That is what National Rally wanted, buoyed by polls suggesting it could perhaps win enough seats to form its first government.

Mindful that such an outcome could saddle him with a National Rally prime minister for the remainder of his presidency, Macron held his fire.

And for now at least, enough lawmakers have rallied around Macron’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to keep him afloat, mindful of the risk of losing their seats if Macron called voters back to the ballot boxes.

“There's a sword of Damocles hanging over us, it's called the National Rally,” said Ouzilleau, who serves as mayor in the Normandy town of Vernon and is a long-time friend of Lecornu.

He says voters have increasingly been telling him that they are ready to test-drive National Rally, breaking decades of uninterrupted rule by mainstream parties.

"It's been two or three years that we've been hearing this: 'We've tried everything except the National Rally, so what is the risk?'" he said.

William Jarrett reported from London.

FILE - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, center, greets people as she campaigns in a market in Pertuis, southern France, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, File)

FILE - Supporters of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen leave after a campaign rally in Perpignan, southern France, Thursday, April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu Parra, File)

FILE - A woman goes home with a meal distributed by 'Laissez Les Servir' (Let Them Serve) in the Fauvettes projects, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, north of Paris, Thursday, April 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

FILE - Residents line up during a distribution to collect soap, vegetables, fruits and other staples distributed by volunteers from community organizations of ACLEFEU in Clichy-sous-Bois, north suburb of Paris, Wednesday, April 22, 2020 as a nationwide confinement continues to counter the COVID-19. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

FILE - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen reacts as she meets supporters and journalists after the release of projections based on the actual vote count in select constituencies , Sunday, June 30, 2024 in Henin-Beaumont, northern France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

SYDNEY (AP) — Two gunmen attacked a Hannukah celebration on a Sydney beach Sunday, killing at least 11 people in what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an act of antisemitism and terrorism.

The massacre at one of Australia’s most popular and iconic beaches followed a wave of antisemitic attacks that have roiled the country over the past year, although the authorities didn’t suggest those episodes and Sunday’s shooting were connected. It is the deadliest shooting for almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws.

One gunman was fatally shot by police and the second, who was arrested, was in critical condition, authorities said. Police said one of the gunmen was known to the security services, but that there had been no specific threat.

At least 29 people were confirmed wounded, including two police officers, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located.

Police said officers were examining a number of suspicious items, including several improvised explosive devices found in one of the suspect’s cars.

“This attack was designed to target Sydney's Jewish community,” the state's premier, Chris Minns, said. The massacre was declared a terrorist attack due to the event targeted and weapons used, Lanyon said.

Hundreds had gathered for the Chanukah by the Sea event celebrating the start of the eight-day Hanukkah festival.

Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish movement that runs scores of centers around the world that are popular with Jewish travelers and sponsors large public events during major Jewish holidays, identified one of the dead as Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organizer of the event.

Video footage filmed by onlookers appeared to show two gunmen with long guns firing from a footbridge leading to the beach. One dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man’s weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.

Minns called the man a “genuine hero.”

Police said emergency services were called to Campbell Parade in Bondi about 6.45 p.m. responding to reports of shots being fired.

Lachlan Moran, 32, from Melbourne, told The Associated Press he was waiting for his family nearby when he heard shots. He dropped the beer he was carrying for his brother and ran.

“You heard a few pops, and I freaked out and ran away. ... I started sprinting. I just had that intuition. I sprinted as quickly as I could," Moran said. He said he heard shooting off and on for about five minutes.

“Everyone just dropped all their possessions and everything and were running and people were crying and it was just horrible," Moran said.

The violence erupted at the end of a hot summer day when thousands had flocked to the beach.

“It was the most perfect day and then this happened,” said local resident Catherine Merchant.

“Everyone was just running and there were bullets and there were so many of them and we were really scared,” she told Australia’s ABC News.

Albanese told reporters in the Australian capital, Canberra, that he was “devastated” by the massacre.

“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah, which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith. An act of evil, antisemitism, terrorism that has struck the heart of our nation,” Albanese said.

“Amidst this vile act of violence and hate will emerge a moment of national unity where Australians across the board will embrace their fellow Australians of Jewish faith,” he said.

World leaders expressed condolences. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the “ghastly terrorist attack” and offered his condolences to the families who lost their loved ones.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was being updated on the “appalling attack.” Police in London said they would step up security at Jewish sites.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X that “The United States strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Australia targeting a Jewish celebration. Antisemitism has no place in this world.”

Australia, a country of 28 million people, is home to about 117,000 Jews, according to official figures. Antisemitic incidents, including assaults, vandalism, threats and intimidation, surged more than threefold in the country during the year after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza in response, the government's Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal reported in July.

Throughout last summer, the country was rocked by spate of antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars were torched, businesses and homes graffitied and Jews attacked in those cities, where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population live.

Albanese in August blamed Iran for two of the attacks and cut diplomatic ties to Tehran. The authorities didn't make such claims about Sunday's massacre.

Israel urged Australia's government to address crimes targeting Jews.

“The heart of the entire nation of Israel misses a beat at this very moment,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. “We repeat our alerts time and time again to the Australian government to seek action and fight against the enormous wave of antisemitism which is plaguing Australian society.”

Mass shootings in Australia are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gunman killed 35 people, prompted the government to drastically tighten gun laws and made it much more difficult for Australians to acquire firearms.

Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides with death tolls of five people in 2014, and seven in 2018, in which gunmen killed their own families and themselves.

In 2022, six people were killed in a shootout between police and Christian extremists at a rural property in Queensland state.

McGuirk reported from Melbourne, Australia, and Graham-McLay from Wellington, New Zealand. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

A small Christmas tree is at the center of an abandoned holiday picnic at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Bystanders stay where police cordon off an area at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers standby at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)