Before the second round of municipal elections, Sunday evening, MEP Nicolas Bay National Rally said that his party had not suffered a real defeat in this election. According to him, "the RN does not have as sole objective the municipal alternative", he explains Friday evening at the microphone of Nathalie Lévy on Europe 1.

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Sunday evening, the France of the town halls will not be navy blue: after having retained the municipalities won in the 2014 elections, the National Rally is not able to prevail in many cities during the second round of this election. This is the reason why RN Nicolas Bay MEP chooses to minimize this electoral meeting at the microphone of Europe 1, Friday evening. According to him, "the presence in the municipal elections is an important but not necessarily decisive step" in the conquest of power targeted by the far right party.

Eyes on Perpignan

First, "most of the town halls won in 2014 were kept from the first round" and the RN can "win a few more in the second round". For Sunday, all the navy blue eyes turn to Perpignan, where the part of the Louis Aliot party will try to wrest the town hall from the republican front embodied by the outgoing mayor, Jean-Marc Pujol. "There is a real dynamic," says Nicolas Bay.

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But if the National Rally does not reap very good results, Sunday, it would be partly because of a form of clientelism during this particular period, after the first round of March 15: "Some mayors took advantage of the health crisis to make people forget their bad record. We have to vote on the real balance sheet of mayors, waste, insecurity, clientelism, excessive taxation. "

"Local establishment cannot be improvised"

But more structurally, the National Gathering finds it difficult to take root in local political life: "Local implantation cannot be improvised", concedes Nicolas Bay, who immediately points to the very mixed results of La République en Marche, Parti born in 2016 who "cannot establish itself locally". "We see the parties make 8% who manage to keep their advantages, because the vote is made outside of political parties and local personalities benefit from the support of the population," he said.

These reasons push the Rassemblement national to "step over" a ballot which is not traditionally favorable to it: "The Rassemblement national does not have as sole objective the municipal alternative, even if it is an important stage which can serve concretely in the daily action of proximity, he nuances.