to explain what happened and what it means, we are joined now via skype from paris by eleanor beardsley of npr. >> eleanor we usually would not care about a local election or local elections in france. why did this one become so interesting? >> this is a local sort of elections people don't usually go vote in huge numbers. it became very interesting because the national front the tar right national front party tar right national front party was in the lead, so the parties on the left and the right became very scared and told voters you got to go out and vote because if you don't vote that's a pull away from the national front. there was not this huge wave of votes for the national front. the lead party was nicholas sarkozy's mainstream party. about 50% of voters turned out on the first round of this poll and they voted in the mainstream conservative party. second place was the socialist party. there has been a lot of disenchancement with be socialist president francois hollande. and 24% of the vote they had a decent score. >> on that decent score is that motivated in part by the terrori