Les municipales 2020 - on the eve

On Sunday 15 March 2020, French voters go to the polls nationwide to elect their municipal councillors for the first time since March 2014. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, this ‘lowest’ echelon of local government matters to the French because it is where they feel in touch with politicians, whether they live in a small village in the middle of nowhere, or in one of France’s larger cities. Voter engagement remains relatively strong, and a series of opinion polls carried out over the last couple of years, especially during the gilets jaunes crisis, showed that voters appreciate the work that their maires and local councillors do on their behalves. Emmanuel Macron seriously underestimated the place of mairies and hôtels de ville both horizontally but also vertically, in mediating and mitigating the impact of over-centralisation and state intervention - or the lack of it. In an era when public mistrust of politicians is a dominant theme, more than four out of five voters have a good opinion of the work done by their mayor. According to a poll quoted by RTL on the eve of the election, half of voters would happily see their outoging mayor re-elected or vote for the candidate he or she supports.

The elections matter to the parties too, particularly the opposition. France is no different really from other countries in that local elections usually go badly for the party in government. Thus, although they took Paris and Lyon from the right, the 2001 elections were seen as a disappointment for Lionel Jospin’s left-wing gauche plurielle administration. Similarly, the votes in 2008 and 2014 were described as votes sanctions for Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande respectively. We are not expecting this year’s consultation to be any different for Macron, his PM Edouard Philippe and La République en Marche (LREM). Indeed, the general view at LREM headquarters is that 10,000 councillors out of 500,000 will be a solid return in the circumstances. Already the party is looking beyond the election and Macron has by no means become as invested in these elections as he did in 2019’s European vote, though some senior government figures are standing.

Edouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre from 2014 to 2017, until his appointment as PM, has decided to run again, although he will hand over city hall if his list prevails. In Paris, the former health minister Agnès Buzyn is leading the LREM list, though in circumstances not of her or anyone else’s choosing, after the official LREM candidate, Benjamin Griveaux, was compelled to stand down over allegations regarding his private life. But Buzyn is running third in the opinion polls and also faces a challenge from an LREM dissident list led by the enigmatic Cédric Villani.

And that has been one of the macronistes principal problems: establishing and holding together single lists. Paris is not the only place where dissident LREM lists are running, in the hope that they can get 5% of the vote, allowing them to merge with the main list ahead of the second round. Similarly, although LREM has placed itself in the centre of French politics and tried to reach out to les macroncompatibles to right and left, even its close allies, such as the centre-right MoDem and Agir havetended to prefer to run separately, use the first round as a primary, then let the horse-trading commence. When the party began to look seriously at these elections, back in the autumn of 2018, it certainly hoped to rally candidates to a majorité présidentielle grouping (there are a few of those). Even as recently as last May’s European elections, when the national list led by Nicole Loiseau came a creditable second, some inside the party hoped that performance (22%, just behind the far right at 23%) might carry forward to now. Today that hope is looking decidedly forlorn

In Paris, as I mentioned above, Buzyn is running third, behind the outgoing mayor, the Socialist Anne Hidalgo and the right-wing Les Républicains candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy’s former justice minister Rachida Dati. The last sondages had Hidalgo at 26%, Dati on 23% and Buzyn on 19%. In fourth place is David Belliard’s ecologist EELV list with 11%, then Vilani dropping to 7%. In the second round, the best guess is a combined Hidalgo/Belliard list taking something like 42% of the vote, Dati 32% and a Buzyn/Vilani combination 26%. But these things have to be handled with care, because the election in Paris happens within the arrondissements. Despite arousing the ire of many Parisians since she succeeded her mentor Bertrand Delanoë at the hôtel de ville, and despite the city voting strongly pro-Macron in 2019, Hidalgo looks likely to hold on.

While many eyes will be turned towards Paris, Paris n’est pas la France and there will be intriguing contests going on elsewhere. (There is an excellent article about the situation in France’s major cities here.) In Bordeaux, where the long-serving mayor Alain Juppé will not be standing because he has become a member of the Constitutional Council, the right should hold on, but leading list, headed by Nicolas Florian of the LR, includes MoDem and Agir, who spurned the offer of a joint list with LREM’s Thomas Cazenave. By contrast, there have been no such problems in Lyon, where Gérard Collomb, one of the first Socialists to rally to Macron, heads the polls the new Grand Lyon metropolitican diistrict at the ehad of an LREM/MoDem/UDI list, while the same appears to be true for Yann Cucherat in the city.

Further down the Rhône valley, in Marseille, like Bordeaux they are waving goodbye to a long-serving mayor. Jean-Claude Gaudin was first elected as local councillor in the cité phocéenne in 1965. The LR list headed by Martine Vassal looks likely to win in the second round, when she will likely team up with an independent right-wing list of Bruno Gilles. But the Rassemblement National list of Stéphane Ravier is not far behind in the opinion polls (24% plays 22%). There is also a strong-looking left-wing coalition list, one of the few including the Socialists, Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) that might, if it merges with the Greens, get close to Vassal in the second round.

The performance of the ecologist EELV was one of the surprises of the last European elections, as they pushed LR into fourth place and seemed to be emerging as THE force on the French left. In these elections, in some cities they are on joint lists with other left wing parties (LFI, the Communists, Benoît Hamon’s Génération.s etc), in others not. In Rouen and Grenoble they are leading the polls, and in a few others (Strasbourg, Poitiers, Lyon), they look good for second. Who they team up with in the second round will be fascinating and even some LREM/EELV combinations might be envisaged.

Six years ago, the principal beneficiaries of the unpopularity of the Hollande presidency and the premiership of Jean-Marc Ayrault was the right-wing UMP, now Les Républicains. Success in les municipales put them back on an even keel after losing the presidential election in 2012 and the controversies surrounding electing a successor to Nicolas Sarkozy. December 2015’s regional elections seemed to confirm le comeback. But then it all fell apart with the Fillon candidature in 2017 and they have failed to make any kind of headway since then. The European elections of May 2019, where they managed less than 8% of the national vote under the leadership of Laurent Wauquiez was the nadir, but at least it undermined the position of those within the party who argued that it needed to face the challenge of Marine Le Pen by trying to occupy her space. As I wrote at the time, there is only space for one identitarian party in France, and it’s the Rassemblement National. Instead, LR will be counting on its more established names - Estrosi in Nice, Baroin in Troyes - to steady the party’s position. In Nice, the macroncompatible Estrosi’s broad coalition might even get home in the first round. But this is also an élection à risques for the right. In September half the Senate will be re-elected and its colleges are based on the municipal councils. The party would not survive losing control there.

The last municipal elections were a major boost for Marine Le Pen, following on from her remarkable perfomance in the 2012 presidential election and just ahead of the May 2014 Europeans. Until then, the FN had made little headway in municipal elections. True, the party made its first real breakthrough in the 1983 round in Dreux, to the west of Paris, and there were wins in Orange, Vitrolles and Toulon, for example, in the 1990s. But these were anomalies. In 2014, however, the party took control of more than a dozen good-sized municipalities and not just in its Provençal heartland. In Hénin-Beaumont, in the Pas-de-Calais, where Le Pen made her base, the list led by Steeve (yes, really) Briois took the council in the first round. And while a total number of 1200 FN/Rassemblement bleu-marine councillors elected might not sound like many, it was better than even the party’s own best guess of around a thousand and pointed towards a party beginning to put down roots in the localities. One disappointment for the FN in 2014 was at Perpignan, where Le Pen’s then partner Louis Aliot failed to take the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales.Six years later, as things stand, it would take a mighty act of will and a solid left-right-ecologist bloc républicain to stop him.

And Edouard Philippe? According to the opinion polls he should be a shoo-in. But that was before he announced the closure of all but essential businesses on the Saturday evening before. As I write this, a few minutes before midnight (French time) on 14 March, Twitter is still alive with speculation of a last minute postponement (ignoring the fact that France’s overseas dependencies have already started to vote.)

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