The far-right Front National (FN) will play a key role in next year's local council elections in France, even if Marine Le Pen's party is unlikely to seize control of many, if any, councils. That is one of the main findings of an exhaustive study of the country's local election results since 2004, carried out by political expert Denys Pouillard, the director of the political monitoring unit the Observatoire de la vie politique et parlementaire (OVPP). This recently-published report, which is also based on interviews with key local figures, is being actively studied by the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault as the government plans its strategy for elections that will be a first real test of its popularity since François Hollande's election in May 2012 and the Socialist Party's victory in the parliamentary elections a month later.
The report's importance was underpinned by the results of first-round voting last Sunday, October 6th, in a local by-election at Brignoles in the south of France. Here the Left candidate – the ruling Socialist Party did not field a candidate in this traditionally communist stronghold, instead urging voters to back the Front de gauche – was knocked out in the first round, attracting just 14.6% of the votes. Next week's second-round run-off will be between the conservative UMP, whose candidate picked up 20.8% of support in the first round, and the FN's Laurent Lopez who easily came top with 40.4%. Meanwhile a poll suggests the FN could become France's leading party in next's year's Euro elections with 24% of the share of the vote.
Another key finding of the OVPP study is that the Left could lose between 75 and 200 towns with more than 3,500 inhabitants to the Right. This would certainly mark a retreat from the Left's strong performance in the 2008 local elections, but would not represent a massive defeat. “Traditionally local elections are lost by those who have just won national elections,” says Denys Pouillard. “That won't be the case this time.”
Indeed, the study suggests that “even in the worst situation, the Left would only lose a very limited number of towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants”, says the author. The Left currently holds control in 32 of the country's 49 largest towns and cities and the report indicates this position of dominance is unlikely to change much.
The exception could be Paris, which was won for the Left in 2001 by Bertrand Delanoë who is now stepping down as mayor. The OVPP says that with just six months to go before the elections, there are too many uncertainties to predict the outcome of the battle to replace him. A victory by Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet for the right-wing UMP opposition party over Delanoë's anointed successor, Anne Hidalgo, would have a major impact on the national political landscape and overshadow any successes by the Left in other major cities.
As for the FN, it seems likely to just take control of one or two councils, that of Hérin-Beaumont in the Pay-de-Calais in the north-west of France, and perhaps the seventh district of Marseille in the south. But nonetheless it is set to play a key role in three-way contests in second round voting in next March's elections, and to significantly increase its number of local councillors as part of its strategy to “penetrate” the political system. “The FN will be in a position to increase its representation in some cities, to create new opposition groups in medium-sized towns and smaller towns, and to take its place on communities of communes [editor’s note, local authorities made up of a group of communes],” says Pouillard.
It is also in those small towns where the FN is set to make a breakthrough that the Socialist Party (PS) could suffer its biggest electoral setbacks. If so, they would mark the first of a spiral of potential defeats at the hands of voters, with the European polls quickly following in June 2014, plus elections for the Senate in the autumn of 2014 and regional elections in 2015.
However, the predicted range of the number towns that the Left could lose in March is a wide one; between 75 and 202 could go to the Right, while the Left could win control in 16 to 43, the study says. The reason why it is so wide is that Denys Pouillard is basing the predictions on three different scenarios (see table below), which vary according to what the economic situation will be at the start of 2014.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“Either François Hollande wins his economic bet, with a fall in the unemployment rate at the end of the year and the return of economic growth, or he doesn’t,” says Pouillard. “If he succeeds, he appears credible, restores some trust, and the direct impact will be the return of the Left's electorate, which has been abstaining for some time, as the series of by-elections in 2012 and 2013 show. In the opposite scenario, the situation is much more difficult. Even catastrophic,” he says.
In the “best case” scenario for the Left, François Hollande would succeed in reviving hopes “identical to those in May 2012 [editor's note, when he was elected]”, says the study. The losses of the Left compared with 2008 would thus be limited to about 75 towns with populations of more than 3,500, while it would also gain up to 40 others. In such a scenario the far-right FN would not be a “disruptive element” even if it “replaces the traditional Right in certain volatile areas”. However, even in this ideal scenario for the Left, it would still probably lose its majority in the Senate later in the year. French senators are voted in not by the general public but by elected representatives – mostly mayors and local councillors. If the Left loses a number of councillors in March 2014, this will almost certainly mean losing senators in the Senate elections, and thus the majority it won for the first time in 2011.
Far-right senators in 2014?
In the “catastrophic” scenario, meanwhile, the economic situation does not improve and the Left's voters stay at home for the first round of voting – as seen in Brignoles on Sunday, for example when the abstention rate was 67%. In the small and medium-sized towns won by the Left since 2004, the political impact of this could be “devastating”, says the report. The Left, and especially the PS, would lose control of more than 200 towns and would win control in only around 15. This scenario would “indicate for the Left a very bad position ahead of the European elections in June 2014 and the cantonal and regional elections in 2015”, says the OVPP's analysis. In the same way that the local elections of 2001 triggered a series of electoral successes for the PS, so a poor performance in March 2014 could mark the start of a number of defeats for the ruling party. And in these circumstances the FN would have enough local elected officials to win one or two seats in the Senate in the partial senatorial elections later in the year; if so, it would be the first time the far-right party gained representation in France's upper chamber.
But between these two very different scenarios, the OVPP study also sets out a third. In this one François Hollande “wins his social and economic gamble” but city centre voters, who are generally centrist in nature but who have voted Left for the last decade or so, stay away from the Left this time. This might be for a number of factors, including the government’s handling of the Syrian chemical weapons saga, the law on marriage for all, or the possible creation of a new centrist movement between Jean-Louis Borloo and François Bayrou. In this middle scenario the Left would lose around 150 towns with populations of 3,500 or more.
The OVPP study lists those towns that the Right could take from the Left at next year’s elections, and also the smaller number that the Left could take from the opposition.
Among those Left-controlled towns with populations of more than 100,000 that are “very under threat” are: Strasbourg (mayor: Roland Ries, PS, held since 2008), Reims (Adeline Hazan, PS, held since 2008), Angers (socialist since 1977), Amiens (taken from the Right in 2008), Ajaccio (Simon Renucci, allied to the PS, held since 2001), Valence (Alain Maurice, PS, held since 2008), Clamart (Philippe Kaltenbach, PS, held since 2001), La Seyne-sur-Mer (Marc Vuillemot, PS, held since 2008). “These are towns where the Left hasn't taken root and where local factors favour the Right,” says Denys Pouillard. Another town that could be taken by the Right is Belfort, the stronghold of former socialist minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement.
Towns described as “under threat” include Saint-Étienne (socialist since 2008) as well as a series of towns with populations of more than 50,000: Caen (Philippe Duron, PS, held since 2008), Metz (Dominique Gros, PS, held since 2008), Argenteuil (Philippe Doucet, PS, held since 2008), Aulnay-sous-Bois (Gérard Ségura, PS, held since 2008, this is the town where the PSA Peugeot Citroën car factory will close in 2014), or Brive-la-Gaillarde (Philippe Nauche, PS, held since 2008).
Others that could also change hands include: Salon-de-Provence, Aubagne, Anglet, Auxerre, Chambéry, Saint-Chamond, Pontault-Combault, Liévin, Maubeuge, Annemasse, Goussainville, Thionville, Hénin-Beaumont, Bastia, Carpentras, Viry-Châtillon and Colombes.
The loss of certain towns would cause headlines. If the socialists lose Ajaccio and Bastia, for example, it would show that the Right had regained Corsica. The loss of the northern towns of Hénin-Beaumont and Liévin would symbolise the rejection of the wheeling and dealing of local socialist bigwigs, while losing Brive, which is in François Hollande's stronghold in the Corrèze departément of central France, would certainly make waves. Though in fact Hollande's own town of Tulle, where he was mayor, is not itself at risk from the Right. Finally, victory in Auxerre in central eastern France for the very right-wing UMP member Guillaume Larrivé, an MP and former adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy in the Elysée, would confirm the emergence of a new generation of hard-line right-wing politicians.
However, the Right could also lose control of a number of towns. Those that the UMP hold that are “very under threat” or “under threat” include: Aix-en-Provence (Maryse Joissains, UMP, held since 2001), Béziers (held by the UMP since 1995, this time with right-winger Robert Ménard as candidate with FN support), Avignon (Marie-Josée Roig, UMP, held since 1995), Nîmes (Jean-Paul Fournier, UMP, held since 2001), Perpignan (Jean-Marc Pujol, UMP held since 2009), Bourges (Serge Lepeltier, UMP, held since 1995).
Other towns that could go to the Left: Saint-Brieuc, Nancy, Talence, Mont-de-Marsan, Bayonne, Gap, Châtellerault, Savigny-sur-Orge, Longwy, Douai, Alès and possibly Corbeil-Essonnes, the stronghold of billionaire industrialist Serge Dassault, about whom Mediapart recently published a recording in which he admitted having bought the victory of his successor as mayor.
Denys Pouillard's analysis does not linger over the shifting power bases within the Left itself. But he does note that the French Communist Party could lose “certain important towns” to the Socialist Party.
Right under threat from far-right
A key conclusion of the OVPP study is the likely role of the FN as a key player in the 2014 local elections, where even in small towns and villages there are likely to be numerous contests in which three candidates – including an FN one - go through into the second and crucial round of voting. According to the analysis, during the first round of voting in the 2012 presidential election, Marine Le Pen came first in “49 towns with populations of more than 10,000” and in “1,032 communes with between 1,000 and 3,500 inhabitants”. In all, Le Pen topped the voting in 6,000 communes out of a total of 36,000, the vast majority of them being very small communes.
If its electorate abstains in large numbers, the Left's candidates could find themselves eliminated in the first round voting in many areas. “The Left has to make sure that it gets its vote out: a weakening [in its vote] would help the Right's progress, and risk the Left being taken hostage either by simply being eliminated or being lowly-placed in the three-way contests whose outcome would be uncertain,” says the report.
But there is also a real threat to the Right too, which risks being replaced by the far-right FN. “The increase in the number of three-way contests in 2014, as a result of the FN investing resources in certain towns or areas, could become fatal for the Republican Right in the south east and, in general [in France], to the east of a line from Le Havre [in the far north-west] to Montpellier [in the south],” says the report.
As stated, the FN is itself likely to win very few towns. Hénin-Beaumont on the north-west, which has been nurtured for years by the FN supporter Steeve Briois, and where Marine Le Pen narrowly failed to win a seat in last year's parliamentary elections, could fall to them. As could the seventh district in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, the stronghold of PS MP Sylvie Andrieux who has been “on enforced leave” from the party since being convicted in May for the misuse of public funds.
Further wins by the FN cannot be ruled out, though. For example, if in some towns there is a massive abstention by PS voters, a strong turnout by the Right and a push from the far left, this could, in Denys Pouillard's words, constitute an “explosive mix”.
Another unknown factor is the likely behaviour of voters in towns with populations between 1,000 and 3,500 which are for the first time using a system of proportional voting – which gives smaller parties a greater chance of wining some council seats – that was hitherto reserved for larger towns. “We risk seeing some real surprises in certain départements such as the Aisne, Marne, Haute-Saône, Moselle, Haut-Rhin or the Somme,” says Pouillard. In the event of three-way contests in the second round, a “coalition of the discontented” could opt for a candidate from the FN or various strands of the radical right.
In any case, it seems clear that the there will be an upsurge in FN support and that Marine Le Pen's party should significantly increase its number of town councillors. “The other area where the FN or radical right is breaking through is in the urban fringes or in semi-rural, semi-urban towns where rumours, uncertainty and robberies can lead to apocalyptic visions of society,” says the OVPP study. FN members will be joining the councils of urban agglomerations and the councils on planned new metropolitan authorities. “This is political penetration that will be useful for the future,” notes Denys Pouillard.
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English version by Michael Streeter