- Martine Aubry was elected for a 4th term as mayor of Lille.
- It only preceded its environmental opponent by 277 votes.
- In Lille, abstention reached a record at nearly 69%.
Representative democracy? Sunday evening, Martine Aubry was elected for a fourth term as head of the city of Lille. A victory on the razor's edge when, for much of the evening, several estimates had given the outgoing mayor beaten by his environmental opponent, Stéphane Baly. Coupled with record abstention, the 40% obtained by the socialist show a slow but inexorable erosion of its electorate. A disenchantment? Not necessarily…
"I feel great sadness at seeing this rate of abstention," said Martine Aubry a few minutes after having officially announced her re-election as mayor of Lille. And there was indeed something to shudder, the participation in the second round of the municipal election in Lille having reached only 31.73%. Coronavirus, disinterest in politics, swimming session? We will probably never know why only 39,479 people from Lille went to vote out of the 124,439 registered.
Martine Aubry never made less than 34% in the first round
But suddenly, Martine Aubry has never been elected with so few votes. Its 15,389 voters in the second round, 277 more than Stéphane Baly, represent 12.37% of those registered and only 6.55% of the population of Lille, estimated at 234,842 inhabitants in 2020 according to INSEE. Since 2001, Martine Aubry had never made less than 34% in the first round and never less than 49% in the second round after agreement with the environmentalists. However, even in 2008, the year of the most beautiful electoral victory for the socialist, its electorate represented only 28.38% of those registered on the lists (15.18% of the population).
Municipal results
Could the rise of environmentalists explain the loss of speed of Martine Aubry? In fact, if we look at the number of environmental voters in each first round since 2001, we notice rather a certain stagnation. Besides that of March 15, their best score dates back to 2001 with 8,437 Green ballots. In the first round, in 2020, EELV convinced “only” 3,564 more voters than in 2014. The “green wave” only really took place on Sunday when environmentalists almost doubled their best score ever obtained in Lille .
Sunday evening, the former LR candidate in Lille, Marc-Philippe Daubresse, asked the question of the legitimacy of an elected official in the light of such a massive abstention. A national phenomenon which is therefore in no way linked to the Lille context. The question of representativeness is not new, however. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of the Republic with 46.61% of the vote, less than one in two voters. And yet he had largely benefited from the call to block the National Front candidate, Marine le Pen.
Municipal
2020 municipal results: "The coronavirus is not enough to explain this historical abstention", according to political scientist Jean Chiche
Municipal
Municipal elections: The four key figures of this exceptional 2020 election
- Abstention
- Martine Aubry
- Lille
- Municipal
- Elections