Paris (AFP)
Political parties are no longer receiving revenue and the municipal elections in March should see the surge of candidates "without a label", at the risk of making the reading of the results even more complex.
No logo on posters, few national leaders on the ground ... Already little politicized, the municipal campaign is playing more and more on local themes.
The opposition had hitherto had an interest in politicizing this intermediate election to stir up dissatisfaction with the government in power. But the limitation of the cumulation of mandates - which marks the end of deputies-mayors and senators-mayors - and the emergence of Emmanuel Macron have changed the situation.
To consider a parliamentary career, the mayor had to have the nomination of a party. Since cumulation is prohibited, the link between the local elected representative and a national formation has less reason to exist.
"We are going to see the lists flourish + Municipal majority + the least politicized possible", anticipates Bernard Sananès, president of the Elabe institute: "Given the bad image of political parties in general, there is a distancing from political labels and this is even more the case at municipal level. "
-Not "a vote of brands" -
Another peculiarity of the ballot, the formations of the two candidates for the second round of the 2017 presidential election, La République en marche and the Rassemblement national, are very little established locally and there is no classic right-left confrontation on the ground.
Experts, however, distinguish large cities, where etiquette still has meaning, and small cities and rural areas.
After the collapse of their parties in the Europeans, elected "Macron-compatible" Republicans shun the LR label and that of the PS hardly has the rating on the left.
LREM also derives little benefit from the discredit of its competitors. "In the big cities, the LREM candidates try to surf on an urban electorate, graduate, which is favorable to them. The claim of macronism can help them a little, but we see in the polls that it is very difficult for them", underlines Bernard Sananès.
"The municipal elections are not a vote of partisan brands," says Frédéric Dabi, deputy director general of Ifop.
Certain forces, like EELV or the National Rally, "however benefit from a vote of labels", he tempers. On the strength of their good results in the Europeans, EELV environmentalists are leaving under their own colors in a number of large cities. And the RN candidates bet on the label of their party to make themselves known.
- Hide these labels ... -
Other candidates who have obtained their party's label prefer not to show it too much. Explanation: the nomination allows them above all to avoid having dissident candidates from their own training.
In mid-October, the Senate acted on this depoliticization by adopting an amendment allowing candidates "without labels" in municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants to present themselves without any "political nuance" being attributed to them.
Different from labeling, "shading" occurs after the vote. In small municipalities, the prefect traditionally attributes to the "unlabeled" a political nuance: various right, various left, centrist ...
A practice challenged by many elected officials who do not find themselves in the nuances that are attached to them. But which ultimately allows visibility on the distribution of elected officials between the main political currents.
The will displayed by the government to raise to 9,000 inhabitants the threshold of the communes from which the prefects will attribute a political nuance to the elected officials provoked in mid-November an outcry from the opposition to the National Assembly.
Republicans like the left suspect the macronists of wanting to blur the results of the municipal elections. With the evening of the poll the risk, according to them, of having a rural France "suddenly without label".
dch / ib / cb
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