The outgoing autonomist president of the Corsican executive council Gilles Simeoni came out on top Sunday, June 20 in the first round of the territorial elections with 29.2% of the votes cast, in a region where more than one in two voters voted nationalist.
“We are very high.
The first round is extremely positive, Corsica has just said very clearly that it wants to continue on the path to emancipation, ”
said Gilles Simeoni from Bastia on France
3 Corse even before the final results.
He said he wanted to "try to build convergences that could materialize in the second or third round"
.
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In second position behind Gilles Simeoni comes the one he presented as his
"main competitor"
, Laurent Marcangeli, mayor of Ajaccio and head of a union list of the right, invested by Les Républicains, who obtained 24.9 % of votes cast.
This first round of territorials aimed to decide between ten lists and recorded a participation rate of 57.08% - higher than 2017 (52.17%) but lower than 2015 (59.66%) -, a record at the national level where the abstention reached between 66.1% and 68.6% according to the estimates of the polling institutes at the closing of the polling stations.
The four nationalist lists, parties separately, recorded a total of 57.7% of the votes cast, a score higher than their results combined in the first round in 2017 (52.1%).
Behind Simeoni and Marcangeli, come three other nationalist lists: that of the autonomist mayor of Porto-Vecchio, Jean-Christophe Angelini (13.2%) that, independence and refusing any union in the 2nd round, of Paul-Felix Benedetti, at the head of the radical party Core in Fronte (8.4%) and that of independence of the outgoing president of the Corsican Assembly, Jean-Guy Talamoni (6.9%).
The latter not reaching the 7% necessary to stay in the second round is forced to merge.
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The mayor (LREM) of Bonifacio, Jean-Charles Orsucci did not hide his
“huge disappointment”
at his 5.9% which did not allow him to stay in the second round and represented half less than in 2017 (11 , 5%).
Finally, for four lists that do not cross the 5% mark, these territorial units stop there: the list invested by the National Gathering of François Filoni (4%), that of Agnès Simonpietri, the only woman at the head of a list bringing together four left movements and environmentalists (3.75%), that of the communist Michel Stefani (3.18%) and lastly, that of the extreme right-wing sovereignist of Jean-Antoine Giacomi (0.59%) .
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Like Guyana and Martinique, Corsica is a local authority which exercises both departmental and regional powers and has since its creation in January 2018 new skills such as infrastructure management (ports, rail network), culture, sport and the environment. These elections aim to renew for almost seven years the 63 councilor seats of the Corsican Assembly who will then elect the 11 executive councilors and their president, as well as the president of the Corsican Assembly.