Voting began on Sunday in the first round of French local elections where the far-right Front National (FN) hopes to come top and consolidate leader Marine Le Pen’s bid for the presidency in 2017.

Opinion polls suggest voters are unexcited about the election for councillors with limited powers in the “departements”, one stratum of France’s complex local administration which President Francois Hollande has in any case promised to overhaul.

But it is a measure of the fear Le Pen’s far-right party has struck among France’s political elite that Hollande, his ministers and their mainstream conservative rivals have all been touring the country with last-minute appeals to voters.

The FN, which wants a return to the French franc and a referendum on capital punishment, surfed a wave of disenchantment with established politicians to emerge top in last year’s European Parliament elections and won control of a dozen city halls in a separate ballot.

Surveys have put it and the opposition UM