French by-election tests Hollande's post-attacks popularity surge

French President Francois Hollande's newfound popularity after the Paris attacks faced its first major test Sunday as a member of his ruling Socialist party battled against a far-right National Front candidate in a tense by-election.
The first round of the poll last Sunday in the eastern Doubs district -- called after Socialist lawmaker Pierre Moscovici left for Brussels to take office as Economic Affairs Commissioner -- saw FN candidate Sophie Montel come first with close to a third of the vote.
The Socialist Frederic Barbier, 54, came second and the main opposition UMP candidate was knocked out of the race.
If she wins Sunday's decisive second round, Montel, 45, will be the third far-right lawmaker to sit in France's lower house National Assembly.
UMP leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy warned Tuesday of a real risk of the National Front taking power at a national level in the future.
His party nevertheless called on its supporters to abstain from voting for either candidate on Sunday, and all eyes were on whether the 60.5 percent of voters who abstained last weekend would turn out this time round.
- Popularity spike, for how long? -
An hour before polling booths closed on Sunday, more than 43 percent of voters had cast their ballots -- compared with some 34 percent at the same time last week.
In Pont-de-Roide-Vermondans, Barbier's town in Doubs, voters streamed to the ballot box, waiting in line in bitter cold under a grey sky.
The result, which is expected to be known early Sunday evening, will be a test for Hollande's Socialist party and for the president himself.
The ruling party has won none of the 13 by-elections held since Hollande came to power in May 2012, with voters becoming steadily more exasperated with record high unemployment and near zero economic growth.
By the time of the deadly Paris attacks last month, Hollande had become the most unpopular president in modern French history.
But his widely praised handling of the January 7-9 Islamist killings that left 17 people dead boosted his image, and he has now shot back up in the ratings.
An opinion poll carried out by the Ifop polling company 10 days after the attacks showed Hollande's ratings had doubled to 40 percent.
But official figures published late last month showed unemployment hit a new record in December, casting a cloud on this popularity spike.
And a poll published in the daily Le Parisien on Sunday found that two-thirds of French people still think that Hollande is a "bad president" -- down from 77 percent in July.
The importance of the by-election was highlighted last week when both Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited Barbier to pledge their support.
The FN's number two Florian Philippot, meanwhile, has visited Montel, as has Steeve Briois, the high-profile mayor of the former coal-mining town of Henin-Beaumont in northern France.
- From strength to strength -
Marine Le Pen's Eurosceptic FN, which she has skilfully rebranded as more than just an anti-immigrant party, has been going from strength to strength in France.
The FN won control of 11 towns and more than 1,200 municipal seats nationwide in local elections last year in which the Socialists suffered such a drubbing that Hollande reshuffled the entire government.
The result was a huge success for the FN, which in the last local polls in 2008 had claimed only around 60 seats.
The party's rising popularity is widely seen as a result of unhappiness with Hollande's government, as well as general exasperation at mainstream parties which many believe are unable to resolve problems of unemployment, poor growth and security.