PARIS (Reuters) - The far-right National Front is on track to win more votes than any other party in the first round of French local elections this month, a poll showed on Monday, and the Socialist prime minister spoke of "fear" it could win the presidency.
The survey by pollster Odoxa showed Marine Le Pen's anti-EU, anti-immigration party gathering 31 percent of votes on March 22 in the first of two election rounds.
That would place her National Front ahead of the ruling Socialist party, with 21 percent of the vote, and the centre-right opposition UMP party, with 29 percent.
While Le Pen is unlikely to get large numbers of party officials elected in the March 30 runoff, such a first-round score would build on her party's defeat of both mainstream parties during European parliament elections last May.
"I fear for my country. I fear that it will smash itself to pieces against the Front National," Prime Minister Manuel Valls told Europe 1 radio at the weekend.
"Do you think a National Front scoring 25 percent in European elections, perhaps 30 percent in local elections, and so on, cannot win the presidential election? Not in 2022, or 2029, but in 2017," he added.
Most political analysts say that if Le Pen keeps up her momentum, she could reach a runoff round in the 2017 presidential election but then would have little chance of defeating a mainstream candidate to win power.
However, Front officials note that in 12 recent local by-elections, voters switched to the National Front after voting for a mainstream party, hinting that Le Pen could boost her score between rounds in 2017 and edge close to 50 percent.
Previously President Francois Hollande - whose own approval score has sagged after a rise in January - said Socialists needed to "tear away National Front voters" in the elections to designate officials in 96 administrative districts.
National Front Vice President Florian Philippot accused the president of comparing National Front voters to "bad weeds" that need to be rooted out.
Odoxa's online poll was carried out on March 5 and 6 with a sample of 800 people aged 18 and over.