History will probably not retain its outcome, its winners and its losers from this election. It will be remembered as a strange and uncertain election in a country stopped due to a pandemic. But the day after the first round of the municipal elections, and pending an uncertain second round, several lessons should be noted, from the good scores of the ecologists and the RN to the disappointments of the majority, including record abstention.
Abstention at a historical level
This is unheard of for a municipal election, a vote generally appreciated by the French. With a rate between 53.5 and 56%, abstention reached a historic level, almost 20 points higher than in 2014. Only the European elections had accustomed us to such low turnouts. The culprit is not to look far: it is obviously the coronavirus, which generates in the country an unprecedented health crisis. Last minute trip with children, now without school? Afraid of being contaminated in a polling station? Or is it simply certainty that the election will finally be canceled, when the authorities are on the verge of ordering the general containment of the population? There were plenty of reasons to miss the election on Sunday.
The return of the right and the left?
We knew it since the episode of the famous “Castaner circular”: the end of labeling of cities with less than 3,500 inhabitants also meant the end of the pretty maps of France after the day after the ballot, colorful with the colors of the winner of each municipality . And for good reason, the cities of 3,500 inhabitants, which now no longer have "color" - we have put them in gray - represent a substantial part of the area of France. However, this map is not entirely devoid of lessons: it indeed makes it possible to identify a certain return from the classic right-left cleavage, which we had seen disappear, ballot after ballot, since 2017. Few conquests elsewhere , especially bonuses to the outgoing mayor. This is the case on the left of Anne Hidalgo, Martine Aubry or Johanna Roland, leading in Paris, Lille and Nantes. It is also the case on the right in Toulouse, Troyes, Meaux, Nice, Belfort, Saint-Etienne, Limoges, Reims, Charleville-Mézières, Calais… On the other hand, in Marseille and Bordeaux, two cities long acquired on the right, the candidate LR arrived tied (with the Greens in Bordeaux, the left in Marseille).
To achieve a more readable map, you have to zoom in on an agglomeration like the Paris region, which has a number of cities with more than 3,500 inhabitants. In the map below, we find a fairly classic electoral geography of the small crown, with a right very present in the West and the performing left in Seine-Saint-Denis and in Val-de-Marne.
And in Paris? The capital duel ended in the first round with a great operation for Anne Hidalgo, who remained strong in her fiefs, the east and the center of Paris, but who also dominated in the 12th and 14th, rocking districts . The outgoing mayor won a total of nearly 30% of the vote, far ahead of Rachida Dati, more popular in western Paris, and Agnès Buzyn.
Green push, RN confirmation
So much for electoral geography. If we look at the performances of the different political families as a whole, in number of votes, we can see this right-left divide, a little less two other points, however notable: first, the breakthrough of EELV, which confirmed his good score from the last Europeans. In addition to Grenoble, Bordeaux and Lyon, the Greens came first in Strasbourg and Besançon. Second lesson, the RN confirms, with direct re-elections in its strongholds for David Rachline in Fréjus (Var) and Steeve Briois in Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais). And above all, Louis Aliot is very well placed to conquer Perpignan, but this will be the only conquest of the RN, who hoped for better from these elections.
PS side and especially LR, big winner of the last municipal in 2014, the reasons for satisfaction are there, with often a bonus to the outgoing mayor.
A majority sanction vote?
For LREM, these municipal elections were a baptism of fire. And as much to say that this first round was complicated. In Paris, Agnès Buzyn came third, far behind her rivals, and the dissident LREM Cédric Villani did not succeed in his bet. In Lyon and Strasbourg, where the majority party aimed for a victory, the candidate EELV is ahead. In Bordeaux, Lille, Besançon, Perpignan, Grenoble, the LREM candidates are not in the top two. In Nancy and Biarritz, where LREM supported the leavers, also disappointed. On the government side, three ministers, LR defectors, Gérald Darmanin, Franck Riester and Sébastien Lecornu were however elected in the 1st round, in Tourcoing (Pas-de-Calais), Coulommiers and Vernon (Eure). This is not the case for Edouard Philippe, who came largely at the head of the first round in Le Havre, but without reservation of votes for the second round… According to our count, in the 250 metropolitan municipalities where LREM or Modem, the latter received less than 320,000 votes, against 1.6 million, in the same municipalities, for Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the last presidential election.