PARIS (AP) — President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party was decimated in this weekend’s regional elections and Marine Le Pen’s far-right party failed. Those results have upended expectations that the presidential race in 10 months will be a showdown between the two politicians. The results of Sunday’s voting have now bolstered hopes of the mainstream conservative right to pose a serious challenge to both Macron and Le Pen in the presidential election in April 2022. The regional election results underlined the problems of Macron’s young Republic on the Move party, which had hoped to establish a regional foothold for the first time but failed to excite voters. During the last regional elections Macron’s party didn’t yet exist.
