As Emmanuel Grégoire, the front-runner to be Paris’s new mayor, concluded a rousing final campaign speech at a city centre rally this week, supporters began chanting “unity” as they waved the flags of the united left coalition.
“Paris is important for the [2027] presidential contest,” said Odile, a supporter who works in a Paris non-profit organisation. “It’s important that the dam holds against the extremes.”
Belying the event’s optimism and emphasis on unity were polls suggesting the Socialists are at risk of losing the French capital after 25 years, faced with a right-wing challenge and a rival hard-left campaign.
The result will come down to complex second-round run-offs in which runners-up can swing the vote by choosing to withdraw, merge or endorse rivals, a process that will play out across France as it elects almost 35,000 mayors in villages, towns and cities on March 15th and 22nd.
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It is a test of strength for the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen, which hopes to take France’s second city, Marseilles, and will sound the starting gun for an impending presidential election.
Incumbent Emmanuel Macron cannot run again in 2027, and with a successor unclear, the RN is hoping the local elections will give it the momentum to win the powerful presidency of the European Union’s second largest economy.
Which are the key races to watch?
Marseilles
The RN is running 33 out of 119 of its members of parliament in local races, reflecting the importance it places on the contest.
The party is a challenger in Toulon, Carcassonne and Calais, but the diverse Mediterranean metropolis of Marseilles is the prize it covets most.
There, polls show the RN candidate Franck Allisio is neck-and-neck with left-wing incumbent Benoît Payan.
Victory would be a major filip for its leader Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old MEP expected to be the party’s presidential candidate in 2027, pending a final outcome in Le Pen’s appeal against a ban on holding office for misuse of public funds.
Security is an issue for voters nationally and Allisio has campaigned heavily on law and order, promising to beef up police and double security cameras to counter the city’s drug problem.
With the centre-right weakened and the left fractured, Allisio‘s prospect of victory may ultimately be determined by whether old alliances against the far right hold.
France’s tradition of parties from across the political spectrum teaming up to back one moderate to block the far right, known as the “republican front”, is under severe strain.
Whether it holds will have ramifications far beyond Marseilles, and France, as next year’s presidential election has the potential to destabilise the EU itself.
Le Havre
The mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre, Édouard Philippe, is a former prime minister who steered France through the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and is seen as one of the most credible candidates to be a Macron successor in the 2027 presidential election.
His national ambitions could be scuppered by Le Havre, population 166,000, as polls suggest he could lose to a united left coalition in the second round.
“If I fail to convince the people of Le Havre, I will have to face the consequences,” Philippe said this week.
Paris
Paris’s united left candidate, Grégoire, a former deputy to outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo, has the edge in polls on about 31 per cent.
Yet a serious challenger is Rachida Dati of the conservative Republicans on 26 per cent, a former minister who has positioned herself as a change candidate who will clean up a city she describes as dirty, chaotic and in debt.
Dati has promised to boost police and CCTV numbers, and to partially roll back some of the measures that reduced car density as part of Hidalgo’s ambitious campaign of pedestrianisation and development of cycling infrastructure.
A fractured electorate may mean five candidates make it to the second round, making for a highly unpredictable result that could be swayed by various combinations of alliances or withdrawals.
Complicating the picture is a stronger-than-expected showing for Sarah Knafo, the partner of far-right firebrand Éric Zemmour and candidate for his Reconquête party.
Candidates for the radical left La France Insoumise and the centre-right Horizons party – founded by Le Havre’s Philippe – are also forecast to win above the 10 per cent threshold required to compete in the second round.
Nice
The race for the Riviera city has been upended by the discovery of a pig’s head and accusations of a “plot”.
In late February, incumbent centre-right mayor and staunch Israel supporter Christian Estrosi published a photograph of a pig’s head hanging on his gate. Stuck to it was a poster of his face with a star of David imposed on his forehead. “Abject,” he wrote.
Estrosi told media his wife, who is Jewish, had been “shaken”. The incident led to a rare moment of unity in a bitter election, as his hard-right rival, Éric Ciotti, denounced the act.
This week, the plot thickened. A police investigation arrested an acquaintance and supporter of Estrosi. French media reported that the investigation was now focused on a potential deliberate act from within Estrosi’s own camp.
Estrosi issued a statement to say he was the victim of “underhanded manoeuvres”, and an attempt to “infiltrate” his campaign team.
“The campaign is turning into a bad soap opera,” was the headline in Le Monde.
