Mayor Anne Hidalgo won Sunday, June 28, municipal elections in Paris, obtaining between 49.3 and 50.2% of the vote in the second round, according to three polling institutes. The candidate PS, allied with EELV, preceded the candidate LR Rachida Dati (between 31.7 and 32.7%) and that of LREM, Agnès Buzyn (between 13.7 and 16% of the votes), according to Harris Interactive, Ipsos -Sopra Steria and Elabe Berger-Levrault.

Anne Hidalgo would thus collect a hundred seats for her Paris en Commun coalition, against fifty for the LR right and only 6 to 12 for the presidential majority. As in the rest of the country, the ballot was marked by a very strong abstention.

"You have chosen hope, you have chosen to rally", launched on Sunday evening the mayor PS of Paris after his re-election, from the forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville. "You have chosen a Paris that breathes, a Paris that is more pleasant to live in, a more united city that leaves no one by the wayside (...). This victory makes sense because it is collective."

Triumph of a highly contested city official during his mandate

The PS retains the capital after 19 years of reign - 13 years in office for Bertrand Delanoë then six for the outgoing mayor, his heiress and former first deputy. Anne Hidalgo's strategy paid off: by endorsing a resolutely ecological program, the outgoing mayor contained her EELV partners in the first round, then obtained their support.

It is a triumph for a city council very contested during its mandate, criticized for the pedestrianization of the quays of the Seine, the brutal stop of the car-sharing service Autolib, the fiasco of the new version of Vélib 'or the cancellation by justice of a City advertising market with JCDecaux.

The first round on March 15 had already given a clear advantage to the socialist mayor, who came largely ahead (29.3%) ahead of Rachida Dati (22.7%) and Agnès Buzyn (17.3%). Since then, the ranking has remained unchanged in all opinion polls conducted in the inter-lap.

Calamitous campaign for LREM, weak voice reserve for LR

For La République en Marche (LREM), the defeat concludes a calamitous campaign where the insults have multiplied: the dissidence of Cédric Villani, the explosion in flight of the campaign of Benjamin Griveaux after the dissemination of intimate videos, then the blunders and the hesitations of his replacement, the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, weakened by his explosive comments on the "masquerade" of the first round, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 epidemic.

On the Republicans side, Rachida Dati, re-elected in the first round in the 7th arrondissement, will have succeeded in mobilizing her electorate on the ground, with an energetic campaign, centered on the fundamentals of the right, in the former fiefdom of Jacques Chirac then Jean Tiberi. But it will have lacked reserve of votes throughout this unprecedented campaign, hit hard by the Covid-19.

Confident of her strength, Anne Hidalgo therefore advanced as the big favorite of this second round, devoid of suspense. As a symbol, she had already mentioned during the week the measures of her next mandate, including the sustainability of the cycle paths set up during deconfinement or the pedestrianization of the surroundings of the Saint-Martin canal.

Its campaign platform, "Paris en Commun", will become a "long-term political structure" and its current president, Jean-Louis Missika, calls for the creation of a "federation" with citizen lists poised to win in several large cities. With in particular the mission to "prepare the next electoral deadlines".

With AFP

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