Around 30,000 mayors have already been elected on the evening of the first round, but in most of the major cities in France, the result has not yet been achieved. The inhabitants of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, in particular, must choose, Sunday June 28, who will run their city for the next six years.
>> To read: Phoning, networks, proxies: the funny campaign of the second round of municipal elections
After a half-lap of more than three months due to the health crisis of the Covid-19, those who manage to impose themselves in these cities will gain a prestigious victory, for themselves and for their party. In this little game, Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV) could well be the big winner of the ballot, unlike La République en Marche (LREM), of which few candidates remain in the running for the second round in the big cities.
- Paris : Anne Hidalgo confident
Three candidates remain in contention in the capital after a chaotic campaign. The outgoing PS mayor Anne Hidalgo, largely in the lead in the first round with 29.3% of the votes, the former Minister Rachida Dati for Les Républicains (22.7%) and the LREM aid candidate, Agnès Buzyn (17.3% ).
>> To read: Hidalgo, Dati, Buzyn: three candidates for Paris, three strategies
The exceptionally long inter-lap strengthened the position of Anne Hidalgo, who reached an agreement with the environmental list led by David Belliard (10.8%). Rachida Dati, determined, continued to crisscross the field and the maintenance of the candidacy of Agnes Buzyn has long remained uncertain, after her setbacks in the first round. As for the ex-LREM candidate Cédric Villani, fifth in the first round (7.9%), he refused any alliance after fruitless discussions.
Consequences, with 44% of voting intentions, according to Ifop, the mayor PS approaches the second round in a position of strength, ahead of Rachida Dati (33%) and Agnès Buzyn (20%). But the attitude of the abstainers in the first round could weigh on the result.
- Marseille : uncertainty about the post-Gaudin era
The outcome of the election is more uncertain than ever in Marseille, a bastion of Republicans led by Jean-Claude Gaudin for 25 years, where the left came first in the first round.
The campaign panicked in mid-June, with the opening of an investigation into possible proxy fraud at Les Républicains, which accentuated the difficulties of party candidate Martine Vassal, a long-time favorite. The president of the metropolis and of the department, who defends herself from defrauding, is now working to dispel doubt and counter-attack by raising the specter of the "red danger".
On the left, the Printemps marseillais, union list led by Michèle Rubirola, is carried by its scores in the first round, even in bastion arrondissements of the right, and obtained the support of EELV, which started alone in the first round.
>> Read: False powers of attorney, touts, intimidation: in Marseille, an election that turns into a thriller
But the ballot is played by sectors, and the choice to withdraw from one of the most important in the city to block the far right, while maintaining itself facing the ex-socialist Samia Ghali in another, could handicap him.
The name of the mayor of Marseille may not be known until the "third round", when a majority must be released by the municipal council to elect it. Stéphane Ravier's National Gathering, the only one able to maintain itself in all sectors, and the outsiders Samia Ghali (DVG) or Bruno Gilles (dissident LR) could then play a key role.
- Lyon : within reach of the Greens
Will the Greens seize the capital of Gaul? In Lyon, the ballot is double, municipal and metropolitan, and the second round opposes three main camps: environmentalists allied to the left and the extreme left, the coalition formed by LR and Gérard Collomb, and dissidents from LREM.
After his big score on the city on March 15, barring a complete turnaround of voters, the candidate EELV Grégory Doucet is the favorite to be the next mayor.
>> Read: LREM withdraws the nomination of Gérard Collomb after its merger with the Lyon right
The match is tighter on the metropolis, a real political issue because it concentrates most of the powers. He opposes the ecologist Bruno Bernard to Senator LR François-Noël Buffet and the outgoing president of the community, David Kimelfeld - LREM dissident, he did not recover the investiture withdrawn from Gérard Collomb, big loser in the first round who now supports the right.
On March 15, the Greens came out on top in 8 of the city's 14 constituencies: enough to hope to win on June 28 with their allies. But the level of participation and the carryover of votes induced by the alliances make the verdict uncertain.
The most likely is that the election is played in the "third round", when the advisers of Greater Lyon will have to designate their president. Without a clear majority, the negotiation game will be very open. Only one thing is certain: The Republic on the March will lose its stronghold.
- Toulouse: Mayor LR leaving under pressure from a green-left alliance
After rallying the socialists to his green-red-citizen list, the ecologist Antoine Maurice goes side by side with the mayor LR Jean-Luc Moudenc to try to make Toulouse one of the main green conquests of the municipal authorities.
City councilor of opposition after a first mandate in the majority - during the socialist parenthesis from 2008 to 2014 - the ecologist Antoine Maurice, 39 years, judges "serious" the chances of his list Archipel citizen.
>> To read: Municipales 2020: the big French cities ready to go green?
In March, this training, designed in 2017 by a collective and which combines greens, LFI, drawn citizens and associative actors, including a local muse of yellow vests, came in second place with 27.5%.
Faced with a 59-year-old Macron-compatible councilor, whose unlabeled list supported by LR and LREM obtained 36.1%, Citizen Archipelago aims to put an end to the "Toulouse paradox", municipal vote in the center-right against the vote regional and national left.
Sounding the alarm against a takeover of the town hall by "dark forces", "Insubmissive and extreme", Jean-Luc Moudenc counts especially on a remobilization of his electorate, "majority" according to him among the abstainers, while the participation in March fell to 36.66%.
- Montpellier: uncertain triangular
The municipal authorities in Montpellier should keep their reputation as the craziest ballot in France until the evening of June 28, after a first round marked by multiple twists and turns, 14 lists in the running and a very high abstention (65.3%).
The second round will oppose, in an uncertain triangle, the outgoing mayor DVG Philippe Saurel, who came first on March 15 with a mediocre score of 19.1%, his socialist challenger Michaël Delafosse (16.6%), who did not rally to him that the EELV list (7.4%), and finally an improbable alliance between the billionaire septuagenarian Mohed Altrad and three young candidates environmentalists and left.
The boss of the international group Altrad and the local rugby club gathered 13.3% of the voters in the first round after having failed to secure LREM support. For the second round, he forged an alliance with the unclassifiable troublemaker of the Net Rémi Gaillard, the citizen list of Alenka Doulain, supported by a part of rebellious France, and finally the list of Clothilde Ollier, invested then dismissed by EELV whereas she was given favorite for the ballot, and it also supported by a part of the Insoumis Montpellier. On paper, this strange alliance weighs almost 40%, but this agreement mostly looks like a stroke of poker that prolongs the suspense.
- Strasbourg: the LREM surprise ?
In Strasbourg, where the outgoing mayor, Roland Ries, does not stand for re-election after two consecutive terms, it is his foal, LREM Alain Fontanel, 51, who seems to be holding the rope after his surprise agreement with LR Jean-Philippe Vetter , 39 years old. With 38%, the cumulative scores of the two men in the first round theoretically place in the lead for the second round the list led by the candidate macronist, who could therefore offer the presidential party one of his rare choices during these municipal elections.
>> Read: Municipal 2020: the Republic on the move is seriously leaning to the right
Arriving second on March 16 with 20% of the vote, Alain Fontanel, current first deputy mayor, had been largely outdistanced by the environmental candidate Jeanne Barseghian (28%). But the latter, who needed an agreement with the socialist Catherine Trautmann (third with 19%) to consolidate his lead, failed to reach an agreement with the former mayor of Strasbourg.
A breach in which the LREM and LR candidates are engulfed by depositing in extremis, and to everyone's surprise, a common list. A shot of poker, while Jean-Philippe Vetter and Alain Fontanel - who had also started with Catherine Trautmann negotiations which did not succeed - had made mine the previous days to leave each on their own. In the event of a victory, Alain Fontanel would be mayor of Strasbourg and would support Jean-Philippe Vetter for the presidency of the Eurometropolis.
- Bordeaux: a green person facing the outgoing
It must have been a quadrangular after 73 years of right-wing mayor elections in the first round. There will ultimately be only three lists in Bordeaux: the outgoing mayor LR, the Macron-compatible Nicolas Florian (51 years), has made an alliance with the LREM candidate Thomas Cazenave (42 years), whose list had gathered 12.69 % in the first round. This is not much for a presidential party, but enough to give a little oxygen to the heir of Alain Juppe, whose list had only 96 votes ahead of the environmentalist Pierre Hurmic allied to the left ( 34.56% versus 34.38%).
Nicolas Florian and Thomas Cazenave assure today that 80% of their programs overlap and invoke the health crisis to explain this alliance, while the Green of 65 years, who sits for 25 years in the municipal opposition, can hope to gather widely environmentalists on the left.
But not all the left, because the score in the first round (11.77%) of the "anti-capitalist" list NPA-LFI-PCF of Philippe Poutou allowed the former presidential candidate to maintain himself and even to hope becoming a municipal councilor, which would be his first elective mandate at 53 years of age.
- Lille: Martine Aubry for a fourth term?
In Lille, three candidates qualified: Martine Aubry, mayor of PS since 2001, who came first in the first round (29.8%) ahead of his ally in the mandate, the ecologist Stéphane Baly (24.5%), and his ex-cabinet director Violette Spillebout (17.5%), party under the colors of the presidential party.
While the Greens had left doubt over their real intentions, Martine Aubry and Stéphane Baly finally announced that they would not make an alliance.
Martine Aubry, however, received Thursday evening the support of the Lille right who called to block the Greens, described as "madmen", "extremists" and "green Marxists".
Violette Spillebout, who has returned to her managerial post at SNCF, will leave alone after refusing an alliance with the right (8.2%).
- Le Havre: Édouard Philippe in a duel
In Le Havre, Édouard Philippe, who led the first round with 43.60% of the vote, faced in the second round the PCF deputy Jean-Paul Lecoq whose score (35.88%) had created surprise on March 15.
The Prime Minister has since been maneuvering in the epidemic crisis, garnering in passing a sharp increase in his popularity at the national level. An Ifop poll published last week credits him with 53% of voting intentions for the second round in this city of 170,000 inhabitants, against 47% for Jean-Paul Lecoq, but the unknown of the abstention made weigh a strong uncertainty.
>> To read: Municipal 2020: who are the ministers still in the running?
Édouard Philippe was mayor of this sociologically left-wing city from 2010 to 2017. Faced with the ex-LR, elected in the first round in 2014, the left tries to confront despite the tensions between its head of list and environmentalists, and the failure of the merger with the list led by the EELV Alexis Deck in the first round (8.28%).
Seven non-Norman parliamentarians, including an EELV, proclaimed their support for Jean-Paul Lecoq on Wednesday in Le Havre. And stigmatized a prime minister candidate who "would be a ghost mayor" since he confirmed on Tuesday that he would privilege his post at Matignon over that of mayor if he is elected.
- Perpignan: uncertain "republican front" against the RN
On his fourth attempt, Louis Aliot (photo) seems able to conquer Perpignan, unless the "republican front" which is trying to form around the outgoing LR mayor Jean-Marc Pujol manages to bring the left, the center and the right together, as in 2014.
Elected MP in 2017, the former companion of Marine Le Pen totaled 35.6% in the first round and faces a duel Jean-Marc Pujol, who only collected 18.4% of the vote, much less than in 2014 (30 %) when he then defeated Louis Aliot in the second round.
Qualified for the second round, the ecologist Agnès Langevine (EELV-PS, 14.5%), vice-president of the Occitanie region, and the deputy LREM Romain Grau (13%) operated a "republican withdrawal", hoping thus prevent Louis Aliot's victory. But on the left as on the right, anti-Aliot mobilization is uncertain. Three running mate Romain Grau voted for the RN deputy.
If Louis Aliot wins, Perpignan would be, with its 120,000 inhabitants, the largest city conquered by the far right since Toulon (1995-2001).
With AFP
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