How does the electoral success of the far right affect the policy platforms of mainstream candidates? We answer this question by exploiting the political shock of the Front National creation in 1972 and its sudden electoral breakthrough in the 1980s. Through a comprehensive textual analysis of candidate manifestos in parliamentary elections from 1968 to 1997, we find that right-wing candidates respond to local far-right success by amplifying the salience of immigration in their manifestos, framing it more negatively, and linking it to issues such as crime and the welfare state. In contrast, the ideological positions of left candidates do not shift in response to far-right success. We show that the strategic adjustments of right-wing candidates focus exclusively on immigration and help mitigate electoral losses to far-right competitors.