Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Party gained ground in the first round of France’s municipal elections across the country on Sunday in what is a key test of the political temperature ahead of the 2027 presidential race.
Early results reveal that the party won control of around 60 municipalities, compared with 11 in the previous municipal elections, a sign of its growing presence at the local level.
In a turnout of 56 per cent – one of the highest-ever abstention rates for municipal elections – none of the parties emerged dominant ahead of the second round, but according to commentators, the results underscore a rise in mainstream support for both Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s la France Insoumise (LFI).
35,000 villages, towns and cities across France voted for mayors and councillors, with campaigns focusing on local issues such as housing and security. In a number of towns and cities, the National Rally took the lead, with a number of RN Mayors having so far been re-elected, including in Hénin-Beaumont, Hayange and Fréjus.
France’s local elections are held every six years to decide the members of city councils, who then elect the mayor.
The two round vote was held this Sunday, with the second round to be held next Sunday, with the results to help determine party strategy and alliances before the 2027 presidential race. Any candidate who secured at least 10 per cent of the votes qualifies for this Sunday’s second round, with those polling at 5 per cent and above allowed to merge with another candidate if they wish to do so.
Parties have a deadline of Tuesday night to confirm whether or not their candidates will stand in the second round or if they will withdraw.
There were positive breakthroughs for the Socialist candidate in the capital, Paris, where Emmanuel Grégoire polled 36.4 per cent of the vote, significantly ahead of his Republican rival Rachida Dati, his Republican rival, on 24.8 per cent. Dati was seeking to take Paris from the left, which has held power in the city for the last 25 years.
The “Republican Front” or the “Cordon Sanitaire” is a process which a number of parties in the country have used in a manner of collaboration to block Le Pen’s party from seizing power. In the 2024 parliamentary elections, while Le Pen’s party were the unequivocal winners after the first round and seemed on-track to form a government, in the closing days before the second round conservatives allied with communists, and Socialists with centrists in order to defeat Le Pen.
The Conservative newspaper Le Figaro said in an editorial on Monday morning that“the traditional charade of condemnations, decrees, boycotts, and outstretched hands” had taken place this time around.
President Emmanuel Macris’s two terms in office come to an end next year, with uncertainty lingering about which candidates will run for the presidency.
The French Parliament remains divided, split between the left, right, and centrists; the results seem to so far confirm that France remains a clearly divided country.
Overall turnout in the local elections was low, according to estimates from a number of polling stations, which put it somewhere between 56% and 58.5% compared with 63.55% at the same local elections in 2014.
The National Rally held onto the vote in the city of Perpignan, with Louis Aliot re-elected in the first round as mayor of the city.
The party now hopes it could take another city, such as Toulon, in the second round of counting. The party is seen as an important contender in the country’s presidential race, however it has long struggled to establish itself at the local level, having lost councillors in the last elections of 2020.
Winning in a bigger French city, such as Toulon, would give the party grounds to claim that it is building momentum.
It is the biggest challenger in Marseille, the country’s second largest city, which has been run by a left-wing coalition since 2020. Historically, major cities in France have been governed by those on the centre-left, such as the Socialists, or Les Republicains. In 2020, significant cites were won by Green-led coalitions, including in Lyon, however, they came under pressure this time to hold onto those gains.
The Socialist magazine International Viewpoint writes: “Whilst the Macron camp has suffered an electoral beating, the results in many towns and cities reveal the entrenchment and dangerous rise of Marine Le Pen’s RN (National Rally) and the far right. In dozens of towns and cities, the National Rally’s slates are in the lead. In Perpignan, Louis Aliot has been re-elected in the first round, as have the RN mayors of Hénin-Beaumont, Hayange and Fréjus.
“The far right intends to use these municipal elections as a springboard to gain power and strengthen its strategy of uniting the right. Bardella is calling tonight for a merger with the “genuine right-wing lists”. He even goes so far as to propose that the RN withdraw where these lists are in the lead.”
La France Insoumise (LFI), the party of the radical left-winger Jean-Luc Melenchon, is also hoping to gain ground at a local level. It has had strong results in the north of the country in Lille and Roubaix, and will proceed to second-round votes. Mélenchon’s party has been known to court the Muslim vote, with several members of the party, including Mélenchon himself having been accused of anti-semitism. In February, two of the party’s parliamentary assistants were charged with involvement in the death of a nationalist student.
However, the party did perform strongly in many big towns and cities across the country in the first round of voting, with results revealing they were down-to-the-wire with the Socialist party, while polling 27 per cent of the vote in Toulouse.