French far-left, far-right heads to run for 1 seat

The Left Front's Jean-Luc Melenchon announced Saturday that he would run for Parliament in the same northern district where Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, had already announced her candidacy.

Both politicians electrified crowds during the presidential race, tapping into anger over the poor state of the economy and how France's leaders have responded to it.

France's growth has stagnated and its unemployment rate is at 10 percent. The country has a high deficit and debt that economists say it must get under control, probably by reforming its generous social benefit system. But the poor economy has made such reforms and cuts especially unpopular, and the candidates on the extremes of the political spectrum used that to make significant inroads during the presidential election.

Le Pen confounded polls and shocked many observers by garnering 18 percent of the vote in the first round; Melenchon grabbed 11 percent of the vote. Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate, went on to win the second round.