French President Nicolas Sarkozy suffered one of the heaviest defeats of his political career in Sunday's second round of regional elections, dpa reported.
According to projections by the CSA institute, the opposition Socialists and their allies received 56 per cent of the vote, compared to only 37 per cent for Sarkozy's conservative UMP, and 7 per cent for the far-right National Front.
The head of the UMP parliamentary faction, Jean-Francois Cope, told France 2 television, "This is a real defeat for us. The French people have given us a message."
While the vote confirmed tendencies from last Sunday's first round, it appears that the Socialists fell short of their goal of winning every one of France's 22 metropolitan regions.
Projections show that the UMP will hold on to Alsace by a respectable margin. However, they appear to have lost their traditional stronghold of Corsica.
The UMP could also take two of the four overseas regions, Guiana and La Reunion, but results there are always clouded by local politicking and have little relevance for national politics.
If the figures are confirmed, it would represent one of the largest victories for the left in modern French history, and would propel Socialist Party head Martine Aubry into the front ranks of candidates for the 2012 national elections.
She was able to forge an alliance with the pro-environment Europe Ecologie and the Left Front party, which includes the Communists, that the left hopes will be a model for 2012.
A heavy defeat would also move Sarkozy-skeptics within the conservative ranks to demand a government re-shuffle and an end to his policy of handing plum posts to Socialist defectors.
Criticism is also likely to be directed at the UMP's strategy for the week between the two electoral rounds, during which Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon campaigned on their strong stands on law and order.
However, the issue that moved most voters was the economy, as French unemployment reached 10 per cent, and is likely to rise further. Polls show that nearly three of four French adults say Sarkozy's economic policies are not working.
Voter turnout was estimated at 51 per cent, significantly better than for last Sunday's first round but well below the 60 per cent of the 2004 second round of regional elections.