Raffarin says he has taken the voters' message on board

With a majority of the votes counted, the far-right National Front has also made significant gains.

The polls were seen as a mid-term test for the government, which has faced high unemployment and strikes.

The French media expressed doubts about the prime minister's future, after the second round of voting next week.

INTERIM RESULTS Socialist bloc 40% Centre-right bloc 34% Far-right parties 16% Poll spells trouble for right

"Bye-bye Raffarin," said the left-wing daily Liberation on Monday.

The business daily Les Echos said: "There are strong chances that the days of the Raffarin government are numbered."

But Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he would "take into account the message" of the elections and he called on the French to "rally together" for the second round.

The message reflects the impatience, even the exasperation, of some French at the reforms Michele Alliot-Marie Defence Minister

"In the period we have been through - especially after the end of economic growth - we have had to act with courage and determination to re-establish republican authority and hasten the return of growth," he said.

Mr Raffarin did not announce any changes to the unpopular economic reforms, or make reference to his own political future.

Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said the voters' message was to speed up those reforms.

"The message reflects the impatience, even the exasperation, of some French at the reforms ... that they find are going too slow," she told RTL radio.

"It's not going fast enough."

Second chance

The Socialists and their Green and Communist allies won 40% of the vote, according to the interior ministry, and the ruling coalition led by President Jacques Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) achieved 34%.

The far-right won 16.38% of the vote, mostly for candidates for the National Front (FN) of the veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen.

His party won through to next Sunday's second round in at least 17 out of France's 22 metropolitan regions.

Turnout was higher than expected, at an estimated 62%.

AFP's Hugh Schofield says the government is banking on the hope that the first round of two-round elections is customarily used by French voters to express their discontent and that many of its supporters who failed to turn out Sunday will do so in a week.

He said recent opinion polls showed that as many as 70% of voters want to show their unhappiness with a government lumbered with an underperforming economy, a series of public sector protests, 9.5% unemployment and a sense of national pessimism made more acute by fears of Islamist terrorism.

The elections, held every six years, are for the country's 22 regional councils but the issues are national.