France: the challenges of municipal elections

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By: Véronique Rigolet Follow

A week before the first round, the 900,000 candidates are beating the campaign despite the coronavirus epidemic. A crucial election for the main political parties two years away from the presidential election.

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The municipal elections are a key stage for the parties that are already preparing for the presidential election of 2022. Even if the results are likely to be difficult to read due to the reorganization of the political landscape. The famous "at the same time" of Macronie which makes that half of the candidates invested and supported by La République en Marche belong to other parties, to the right LR especially, but also to the socialist left.

Without local roots, the very young presidential party is counting on this “cuckoo strategy” to benefit from the usual bonus for outgoing mayors and try to avoid the electoral beating predicted by the polls. LREM has also lowered its ambitions: target 10,000 municipal councilors, out of a total of 400,000 in France.

The RN of Marine Le Pen hopes to keep the ten cities won in 2014
The municipal elections are not the most favorable to him. So the RN hopes to consolidate its bastions, the nine cities it has managed since 2014 from Hénin-Beaumont in the north to Fréjus in the south. With perhaps a few new conquests, notably Perpignan, a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants where Louis Aliot, the vice-president of the party, is racing. In the inter-lap of the ballot, the RN will also try to make alliances with the right and thus take date for 2022.

LR on the right and the PS on the left will try to bounce them
Question of survival for the traditional parties rolled since the election of Emmanuel Macron. On the right, the Republicans will try to preserve their solid local presence, born of the blue wave of the previous election. And maybe even win a totem: the capital, Paris, where Rachida Dati creates surprise at the head of the polls before the candidate and outgoing socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.

For its part, the PS will try to keep the thousands of municipalities and major cities it heads, Lille, Nantes and of course Paris. But he will have to deal with the growing appetites of Europe ecology-the Greens (EELV). Driven by their good results in the European elections and in dynamics for these municipal elections, the ecologists aim to become the first force of the left by taking leadership over their socialist allies. They could reach several large cities, from Bordeaux to Montpellier via Besançon.

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• French politics
• 2020 municipal elections
• France

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