Over the past 35 years, municipal elections in France have regularly demonstrated that they are as much about national politics as local issues, and Sunday’s punishment of the ruling Socialist Party was no exception.
Since 1977, the ping-pong swings to the Right or Left in almost every one of the six-yearly elections have been to the detriment of the party in government. But this year’s poll to decide the mayors and councillors of village-, town- and city-halls across the country stands out for two principal reasons.
Firstly, the results of the first round and the likely results of the second show the far-right Front National (FN) party has become a part of the fabric of local politics in a large number of municipalities. Secondly, the Socialist Party has seen its support shrink just about everywhere, including within its longstanding electoral bastions, and in some cases it has completely collapsed.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Right opposition party, the conservative UMP, has largely paddled water, failing to capitalise on the Socialist Party’s loss of support.
In the two-round system to elect the 36,681 municipal councils across France, including those of small villages, parties present their separate lists of candidates for council seats, and these lists are headed by the person who, if their list gains the majority, will become mayor. There are 36,681 municipal councils across France, from small villages to large cities. If one of these lists attracts more than 50% of the vote in the first round, they are elected outright and there is no second round. This is the case in a minority of municipalities, and in most cases the elections move on to a final second round decider, in which only those lists which polled 10% of the vote or more in the first round are entitled to stand.
Beyond the spectacular result the FN obtained by its outright win in the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday, where its lead candidate Steeve Briois will now become mayor, what is striking about the surge in support for the party witnessed at the weekend is that it has in many instances well distanced the already high scores obtained by its leader Marine Le Pen in presidential elections in 2012.
This was the case in the southern city of Avignon, where the FN candidate drew the highest number of votes than any other – although without attracting more than a 50% share of the vote, in which case a final knockout result is decided next Sunday. It was also the case in the eastern town of Forbach, where FN vice-president and candidate Florian Philippot also came first, along with the towns of Laval, Mulhouse, Saint-Étienne and Dijon where the party will also do battle in the second round next weekend.
An analysis of the results shows that in certain towns and cities, the FN - which fielded candidates in just less than 600 municipal council contests - has scored well partly by attracting a slice of the electorate of the mainstream Right, but that is not the case everywhere. In the eastern towns of Strasbourg and Nancy, the mainstream Right held onto its 2008 scores, while the Socialist Party lost as much as 10% - the very same amount by which the FN increased its own share of the vote. Whether that represents a transfer of votes from the Socialist Party to the far-right will require closer study, but the question is raised.
Parallel to the rise of the far-right, the socialist ‘barons’ in a number of left-wing strongholds have been left shaken: that’s the case of Gérard Collomb, outgoing mayor of the city of Lyon, whose re-election remains likely but less easy than forecast. Similarly, in Paris, where the city hall has been in the hands of the socialists since 2001, the party’s candidate Anne Hidalgo, who came a close second to the conservative UMP candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, will likely scrape through, thanks to an alliance with the Greens, in a tight result. In the south-west city of Toulouse, outgoing socialist mayor Pierre Cohen still has a chance of winning on Sunday, but the infighting among the local Left now see him trailing the UMP candidate, who garnered the largest share of the first-round vote, by 7%. In Lille, outgoing mayor and Socialist Party heavyweight Martine Aubry was tipped to walk the contest – but in the first-round vote she lost 11% in comparison with her score in the last elections in 2008, while the FN gained on its 2008 result by exactly the same score – and the conservative Right remained largely static (up 1.2%).
In Rennes, capital of the Socialist Party’s heartland of Brittany, the north-west region that last year saw a mass movement of revolt against a proposed new road transport tax, the lead socialist party candidate on Sunday scored 11% less than her predecessor - the now outgoing mayor - did in 2008. In the Brittany town of Quimper, the outgoing socialist mayor Bernard Poignant, a senior advisor to President François Hollande, saw his share of the first-round vote down by 8% on his score in 2008 and is uncertain to retain his post.
But the major surprise for the socialists was the poor performance of its candidate Patrick Mennucci in Marseille, who in last Sunday’s vote came in third place, behind the outgoing UMP mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin - and the second-placed FN. Of all the battering suffered by the socialists on Sunday, the result in Marseille is the most startling illustration of both the party’s decline and the surge of the FN.
Uncertain consequences of abstention rate
The socialists even took a mauling from the Left. In Grenoble, eastern France, the Green alliance party EELV presented a joint list with the radical-left party le Parti de gauche and scored 4% more than the joint list presented by the Socialist and Communist parties.
But while the government has cause for some serious concerns about the results, the mainstream opposition has little to celebrate. For despite the outright re-election on Sunday of UMP party leader Jean-François Copé as mayor of Meaux, the strong performance of UMP candidate Jean-Claude Gaudin in Marseille and the near-certain victory next Sunday of centre-right leader and UMP ally François Bayrou over the outgoing socialist mayor in the south-west town of Pau, the UMP’s gains have overall been mediocre when compared with the Socialist Party’s losses.
Unlike previous municipal election trends, the swing of support away from the party in power to that representing the parliamentary opposition has been small. The UMP has even seen its support diminish in Béziers, southern France, where the candidate backed by the FN enters the second round in first place, as also in nearby Perpignan and the north-west town of Angers. In Nîmes, in southern France, the UMP had little gain from the disastrous performance of the Left.
The following is a list of municipalities where the Socialist Party suffered some of its worst losses in first-round voting last Sunday, with the minus percentage points indicating the fall from socialist scores in first-round voting in the last municipal elections held in 2008:
Roubaix: -27%; Limoges: -26%; Liévin: -20%; Nantes: -21%; Aulnay: -21%; Orléans: -21% ; Tours -19%; Caen: -17%; Grenoble: -17%; Brignoles: -16%; Angers: -15.5%; Laval: -15%; Chambéry: -14%; Clamart: -14%; Dijon: -12%; Mont-de-Marsan: -12%; Strasbourg: -12%; Lille: -11%; Rennes: -11%; Rodez: -10%; Auxerre: -9.6%; Aix-en-Provence: -9.4%; Colombes: -8,9%; Perpignan: -8,5%; Quimper: -8%; Annemasse: - 6.3%.
Among these, the mainsteam right-wing opposition, in most cases represented by the UMP, made sizeable gains on its 2008 first-round score in Clamart (up by 19%), Rodez (up 14%), Auxerre (up 11.6%), Chambery (up 10%) and Rennes (up 10%). But importantly, the FN fielded candidates in very few of these.
In Roubaix, where the Socialist Party lost a massive 27% of the vote compared with 2008, the UMP gained just 2% while the FN vote was up by 10%. In Orléans, the UMP increased its share against 2008 by 4.2%, whereas the FN increased by 10%. In Tours, where the socialist score fell by 19%, the UMP score increased by 0.4% and the FN’s by 13%. In Limoges, where the socialist share fell by 26%, the UMP gained just 3% - the same amount it rose by in Aix-en-Provence. In Lille, where the socialists lost 11%, the UMP share rose by 1.2%, while in Quimper (where the socialist share was down 8%), the UMP vote remained stable.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
But there were also constituencies where the UMP and its mainstream allies lost support, while the FN saw important gains. These include Fréjus, where they were down by -26.3% (FN up 27.5%); Hayange: -20% (FN up 30%); Brignoles: -19% (FN up 37.5%); Aubagne: -11% (FN up 12%); Perpignan: -9,3% (FN up 21%) ; Grenoble : -7.2% (FN up 12%); Nantes: -5% (FN up 8%) ; Toulouse : -4,6% (FN up 8%); Montpellier: -3.4% (FN up 8.6%) and Strasbourg: -1% (FN up 10.9%).
Looking towards the final results next Sunday, the high level of abstention in the first round gives the socialists a straw of hope to cling to. The abstention rate among registered voters last Sunday reached an overall 36.45% - the highest in a constantly rising rate of abstention in first-round voting in municipal elections since 1983 (when it was 21.6%). That year was the last time a ruling Socialist Party has fared so badly as now, and a strong turnout of socialist voters in the second round buffeted the party from a true debacle. However, while opinion poll surveys continue to chart a record unpopularity of President Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, a reversal of Sunday’s pounding appears unlikely.
It must also be underlined that in Hénin-Beaumont, where the FN won the town hall outright last Sunday, and in Béziers, where the FN-backed candidate’s first-round score put him in the lead and well-placed to win next Sunday, the turnout in both was higher than the national average.
In the event of the probable important nationwide defeat for the socialists next weekend, and whatever the exceptions of victory possible in Paris, Toulouse or Strasbourg, the responsibility lies at the door of President Hollande. While he himself is not threatened with losing his post in the very immediate future, he will be under strong pressure to urgently draw the necessary conclusions to avoid being later swept away, much like his predecessor, by the same wave of discontent.
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- This article is compiled from two reports by Hubert Huertas, which can be found in the original French here and here.
English version by Graham Tearse