record abstention rate, Green triumph challenges Macron

Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg… by winning over a historic number of big cities, the Greens are emerging as grand victors from the municipal elections, a reality which Emmanuel Macron will have to take into account when receiving the members of the Citizen’s Climate Convention on Monday.

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Three months after a first round already turned upside down by the coronavirus crisis, the second round was again marked on Sunday by a record abstention rate, around 60%, despite exceptional health precautions and the wearing of a mandatory mask in offices to vote.

This disaffection of the voters aroused the “concern” of Emmanuel Macron. But it does not obscure the height of the green wave that swept through the big cities of France, up to Paris where the outgoing socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo was re-elected after having endorsed a resolutely green program herself alongside his EELV partners.

Elsewhere, the Greens have flown from success to success. In Lyon, they even made a double blow: Bruno Bernard took over the metropolis, seat of real power, and Grégory Doucet the city, beating Yann Cucherat, foal of the outgoing mayor Gérard Collomb. The Greens were also able to claim victory in Strasbourg, with Jeanne Barseghian, and in Bordeaux, with Pierre Hurmic who beat the outgoing LR mayor Nicolas Florian, supported by LREM. A small earthquake after 73 years of right mayor elections on the banks of the Garonne.

The situation is more confused in Marseille where the environmental candidate Michèle Rubirola, at the head of a left coalition, has claimed a “relative victory” after 25 years of reign of the right. But the candidate LR Martine Vassal insisted that there was at this stage “no majority in Marseille”, giving an appointment to the election of the mayor by the municipal council next Friday.

Other big cities – Grenoble, Besançon, Tours Poitiers, Annecy … – fell into the hands of the Greens, who have long served as an auxiliary force but assert themselves as the first to the left before the next electoral deadlines.

LREM fiasco

“This is a historic day for ecology”, welcomed the national secretary of EELV Julien Bayou.

This surge should lead Emmanuel Macron to intervene on Monday morning by receiving at the Elysee Palace the members of the Citizens Convention on the climate to which he intends to provide “strong responses” and “up to the challenges and expectations”, said the Elysée at AFP.

The head of state should generally specify, in the coming days, his stated intention of “reinventing himself” for the last two years of his mandate, with a likely reshuffle at the end. But the results of Sunday make the ecological theme essential.

The triumph of environmentalists contrasts with the fiasco of The Republic on the march, which has won no large city and known for sole satisfaction the comfortable re-election of Edouard Philippe in Le Havre, even if the Prime Minister is not part of LREM.

Will he stay at the head of the government? Emmanuel Macron congratulated him on his “great victory” and the two heads of the executive will see “a little time alone” on Monday.

Very weakened at the national level, the Socialist Party and The Republicans were counting on these elections to rebuild their health locally. If the Greens dominated the evening, the PS nevertheless managed to keep Paris, Lille, where Martine Aubry imposed a hair against the environmental candidate Stéphane Baly, Rennes, Nantes, Le Mans, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon and delighted Nancy and Montpellier.

The Republicans confirmed their establishment by winning in the first round many of the cities with more than 9,000 inhabitants they controlled. Sunday, they saw Jean-Luc Moudenc reappointed at the head of Toulouse, like Christian Estrosi in Nice.

Emmanuel Macron’s main national opponent, the Rassemblement national won Perpignan. With this success, Louis Aliot gives back to Marine Le Pen’s party the control of his first city of more than 100,000 inhabitants since 1995 and Toulon.