- The Republic on the march did not conquer any large city at the end of the municipal poll on Sunday, while the electoral results of the legislative and European elections seemed promising.
- Party officials invoke the youth of the movement, created four years ago, and its lack of local roots to justify this debacle, with the victory of only 146 mayors supported or invested in municipalities of more than 9,000 inhabitants
- But voices are raised to question certain investitures or the choice to ally with the right in several cities, without success.
Yesterday evening, there was no electoral evening organized at the headquarters of La République in progress for the second round of the municipal elections. The health context was not for nothing, but the prospect of having nothing (or almost) to celebrate either. Party in campaign with fanfare in June 2019, the day after an encouraging European election, the formation of Emmanuel Macron ends in the limbo of this poll on Sunday.
Contacted by 20 Minutes , Senator Alain Richard, in charge of steering the LREM investitures, claims 146 mayors supported or invested by the movement in the 1,140 municipalities with more than 9,000 targeted inhabitants. "As for the total number of elected members of the movement in municipal councils, we will approach 10,000, as we hoped, with a strong contribution from elected officials in small municipalities. We had already identified 6,000 after the first round, "continues the parliamentarian.
No big cities
But LREM has not conquered any large city. The party can only claim three municipalities of more than 30,000 inhabitants, but these are halftone victories because the lucky ones elected are outgoing mayors from the right, that the presidential movement has only supported (without investing them ). In Le Havre, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who is not a member of LREM, was re-elected. The outgoing mayor of Amiens, Brigitte Fouré (UDI), also wins with the support of the presidential team. Same scenario in Angers, where the ex-LR Christophe Béchu obtained a second mandate from the first round on March 15.
Elsewhere, the Macron-compatible right, supported by LREM, recorded setbacks, as in Nancy, where the outgoing mayor Laurent Hénart (Radical movement) lost to the socialist Matthieu Klein. In Bordeaux, the LR Nicolas Florian will also return his scarf, just like the UDI Jean-Luc Rigault in Annecy. As for the candidates labeled LREM, they do not save the furniture. In Lille Violette Spillebout came third, like Valérie Oppelt in Nantes, for example.
"Divisions" and "modesty"
Sunday evening, the macronists tried to explain these "disappointing" results by the "divisions" in certain cities, or the youth of the movement. "There are places, [like Lyon], where our own internal division has led us to extremely disappointing scores," said government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye on France 2. "We are a very young political movement" , also said Brune Poirson, secretary of state for the ecological transition.
"We are of course disappointed, even if we approached this election with modesty," concedes to 20 Minutes Marie Guévenoux, co-chair of the nomination committee. “We had very few elected municipal officials. Today, we have contributed to the victory of great mayors, such as Jean-Luc Moudenc in Toulouse, Jean-François Fountaine in La Rochelle or Christophe Béchu in Angers ”, continues the member for Essonne. "And our ministers were elected," she salutes, citing, in addition to the head of government, Gérald Darmanin (Tourcoing), Sébastien Lecornu (Vernon) and Franck Riester (Coulommiers). In Paris, Marlène Schiappa and Agnès Pannier-Runacher however failed to integrate the municipal executive.
"We have zero conquest"
Alain Richard believes that LREM was “limited by two factors: first, our level of opinion, because of the novelty of our candidates and the test of power, was much lower than in the 2017 elections , and activists and voters were divided between the alliance with partners already in place and autonomous and critical assertion, which has hampered our mobilization ”.
For some, it is political strategy that is responsible for this debacle. “The future of progressivism is not in sad alliances with the hard right. LREM must, on the contrary, turn back to ecology ”, reacted Sunday the former LREM Matthieu Orphelin, in a press release. To make an alliance with the right to counter green people in several cities was "to make very little of the fact that a majority of LREM voters in 2017 came from the left", explains on France Info the political scientist Olivier Costa.
“We have zero conquest. But even the RN has a conquest, Perpignan ", loose, more cash, a former party executive, who points among other things" casting errors ", especially in Marseille (where Yvon Berland recorded, 1.53% of the vote) . "These results plead for a fairly radical change of direction," he continues, judging that the leaders of the movement "have charred in this election". "I don't know Stanislas Guerini can stay ..."
Sunday's results could accelerate the reorganization of the party, two years before the presidential election. This Monday, Emmanuel Macron did not comment on the results of the movement he created in 2016, preferring to devote his day to European ecology and revival.
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- Emmanuel Macron
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- LREM