Rallying to the cry of “France for the French” and “One million unemployed, one million immigrants too many,” the Front National burst into the French political limelight in the 1980s. Despite the fact that there had been a moratorium on immigration to France for almost a decade, this single-issue, anti-immigration party captured almost 10 percent of the vote and thirty-five seats in the 1986 legislative elections. Its support did not flag over the next decade, with the radical right party gaining increasingly larger shares of the vote with every election. By 1997, the Front National had surpassed all expectations of its success; in that election, it earned 14.9 percent of the vote and the title of the third most popular party in the French political system.

The electoral success of the Front National was made all the more threatening – especially to the dominant Socialist (PS) and Gaullist (RPR) parties – by its cross-party appeal. A 1981 SOFRES poll reveals that 70 percent of all respondents were opposed to the arrival of further immigrants to France and that between 15 and 22 percent of survey respondents favored the expulsion of all immigrants, policy positions espoused by the Front National. Seven years later, and several years after the start of the Socialists' pro-immigrant campaign, the percentage of survey respondents still preferring the repatriation of immigrants was more than 20 percent.