Sarkozy's Party, UMP, Assesses 2 Paths After Loss PARIS - The victory of François Hollande in presidential elections, the first by a Socialist in 17 years, has thrown the French right into turmoil and opened fresh opportunities for a Socialist triumph in legislative elections in June, with all the potential for a continued redrawing of France's political landscape. Mr. Hollande's victory has presented the French center-right with its most painful dilemma in a generation, particularly following the strong showing of the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in first-round voting. President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement must now decide whether it makes a deal with Ms. Le Pen's National Front to try to limit a Socialist landslide, or reject its extremist positions to preserve the soul of the party, at the risk of weakening its own ranks. "The right is in a very difficult position, because it has to deal with the Le Pen factor," said Pierre Rousselin, a columnist with Le Figaro. It's a trap almost impossible to evade. Either you make a deal with them or you don't, and in both cases you get punished. There are land mines ahead for Mr. Hollande as well. He is a centrist in his own party, which is more left-leaning than he is. And while his victory has been heralded as a moment of fundamental change, his own nature and beliefs, coupled with the constraints of French debt, could mean he ultimately disappoints with a more moderate course. The election was a rejection of Mr. Sarkozy, his personality and his style, but even so, Mr. Sarkozy's announcement that he would not lead his party, known as UMP, into the parliamentary actions magnified the risks the party faces. If UMP does badly in June, there is some concern among supporters that it will fall apart, with some splinter groups forming an alliance with the National Front. Without a deal with the National Front, some experts think, the UMP could easily lose more than 100 seats from its current 305 seats in the 577-seat Legislature. Even the party leader's own seat in Meaux may be at risk. The Socialists and their allies currently have 197 seats, with the non-Socialist left holding another 20. At the moment the National Front has no seats because its candidates were squeezed out in the second round. Mr. Sarkozy's decision to retire from politics has brought into the open a leadership struggle between the current party leader, Jean-François Copé, and the current prime minister, François Fillon. Mr. Copé is reminiscent of Mr. Sarkozy, combative and articulate, a representative of the right in the center-right party, while Mr. Fillon is more quiet and representing its more traditional, Gaullist heart. Mr. Fillon would like to make more of an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement of François Bayrou, who got about 9 percent of the vote, and try to isolate the National Front. The foreign minister, Alain Juppé, who on Monday announced that he would give up his seat in Parliament, may be a compromise candidate, and he is considered closer to the former president Jacques Chirac. Mr. Sarkozy, to try to win the election, tried to appeal to the far right to gain the support of the 6.4 million people who voted for Ms. Le Pen, who won nearly 18 percent of the vote in the first round on April 22. While Ms. Le Pen did not ultimately endorse Mr. Sarkozy in the second round, he is estimated to have won about 58 percent of her voters by emphasizing issues like illegal immigration, crime, assimilation and Islam, according to a poll of voters conducted Sunday by TNS Sofres. In the end on Sunday, Mr. Sarkozy narrowed the gap with Mr. Hollande, but also deeply distressed the centrists in his own party, who have been critical, as Mr. Hollande was, of an appeal to voters based on division and fear, rather than optimism and unity. The party is the standard-bearer of the one founded by Charles de Gaulle at the beginning of the Fifth Republic, in 1958, but it has gone through various forms, each time shaped by its leader. In his shift to the far right, Mr. Sarkozy himself called Ms. Le Pen "compatible with the Republic," but his effort to woo her voters had the effect of legitimizing a party that is on the edge of open racism against immigrants and Muslims and is fiercely opposed to the European Union and the euro. The June elections for the lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly, will be a major test. The elections are not proportional, but work by majority voting in each constituency, so third parties are penalized. If no one wins an outright majority in the first round, which is rare, any candidates winning over 12.5 percent of registered voters face off in the second round. But what if the two final candidates are a Socialist and a member of the National Front? Or if members of both the UMP and National Front are running against a Socialist? That has led some analysts to ask what UMP voters would do. Scott Sayare contributed reporting.