The French Presidential Race After the Local Elections

Arcis-sur-Aube, a small rural town of fewer than three thousand inhabitants, a good two hours’ drive east of Paris, was until recently known mainly as the site of the battle in which, in March 1814, Austrian, Russian and Prussian forces under Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg soundly thrashed Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and paved his way to exile on the island of Elba.

Exactly 212 years later, on March 22 this year, a new clash took place in Arcis, this time an electoral one, in which, according to the Serbian media, Hitler defeated Zelensky and became mayor. That reporting on the local elections in France was even spicier in the Cyrillic part of our former country than elsewhere in the world is, of course, thanks to Vuk Karadžić and his phonetic spelling. The election was won by Charles Hittler, while Antoine Renault-Zielinski came third. Unfortunately, facts are not always kind to columnists in search of symbolism: although both ran “without a label,” as independent candidates are called in France, the winner Hittler is close to the center-right Horizons party of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, while Zielinski had the support of the sovereigntist party Les Patriotes.

Opinions always differ on whether the results of local elections affect the national balance of power. Still, this was the last significant electoral contest before the presidential election in April next year. The incumbent, Macron, cannot run. Most opinion polls give the best chances to Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), who stepped into Marine Le Pen’s shoes after she was excluded from the presidential race by a court ruling for corruption—at least for now, since she has appealed.

The rest of the political spectrum is shattered into a mosaic that more closely resembles a stained tablecloth in a Paris bistro than any traditional distribution of political forces.

In the center is an increasingly isolated Macron, who since his surprise dissolution of the National Assembly after the European elections in June 2024 has been kept upright more by the pomp and glitter of the presidential office than by any real influence over the mess he largely cooked up himself. Since those elections four prime ministers have come and gone, among them the current one, Sébastien Lecornu, who resigned after only 26 days, then let himself be persuaded to return, and will soon, at six months in office, set the best interim time. His “longevity” is probably more a consequence of the fatigue of politicians and the public and of waiting for the denouement the presidential election will bring.

While Macron’s months are numbered, centrist candidates are positioning themselves around him: former Prime Minister Attal, the center-right former Interior Minister Darmanin and, above all, another former Prime Minister, the re-elected mayor of Le Havre, Édouard Philippe. With his victory in the local elections he strengthened his position, unlike yet another former Prime Minister, François Bayrou, whom voters, after two terms, swept from the mayor’s office in Pau in the Pyrenees, probably sealing his otherwise chronic presidential ambitions.

On the traditional right, the Republicans are somehow staying alive, although the prognosis remains uncertain despite victories in some larger cities.

We have already talked about the far right. While Marine Le Pen is out for now, Jordan Bardella is successfully replacing her and still leads in the race for the Élysée Palace. There are two more influential players on this side of the spectrum. Éric Ciotti, former president of the Republicans, who after being ousted in June 2024, in a typically French coup de théâtre, first barricaded himself in the former party’s Paris headquarters, then founded his own, backed the far right, and last Sunday won in Nice—which is no small thing. Zemmour’s Reconquête is chasing the far right from its right.

The greatest confusion reigns, where else, on the left—from the center to its extreme edge, where the capo di banda is the longtime leader of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Before the elections he found himself in trouble not only because of statements that many describe as borderline antisemitic, but also because of the killing of a young far-right activist on the sidelines of a campaign rally in Lyon. Members of Mélenchon’s previously dissolved Jeune Garde have been charged in the death of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque.

On the margins, the Greens are fighting for survival; six years ago they achieved incredible success in the local elections, but after one term they were shown the door in most cities. France wouldn’t be France without the communists—who, incidentally, are counted among the more moderate leftists—and the socialists, once the dominant force on the left, today far from the positions and influence they had in the Mitterrand era. Weakened and divided, they are arguing about cooperation with the far-left Mélenchon—a mirror image of the dilemmas on the right regarding the far right.

And then came the local elections and the hope that afterward it would be clearer who has the wind in their sails and who is running out of breath. But no. At first glance, the balance does not seem to have changed much. Among the larger cities, the right has remained at twelve, the center has one more with six, the whole left together has twenty-two—two fewer than before—and the far right has doubled its previous result with two. Everyone claims to have done well. The devil, as usual, is in the details.

La France Insoumise won in Roubaix in the north—a big surprise. But that was more or less it. Where it supported the traditional left in the second round, it did it more harm than good.

The Greens lost almost everything. They held on in Lyon, where mayor Grégory Doucet beat former Olympique Lyonnais president Jean-Michel Aulas by fewer than three thousand votes, but all the other big cities slipped away.

The Socialists kept power in Paris and Marseille. This gives them hope that the curve is turning upward—it also matters that the winners were candidates who renounced the support of the far left.

In the center, so-so. Macron’s Renaissance won in Bordeaux and lost in Paris and in many other places. The big winner of the center-right is Édouard Philippe—the only one of the likely presidential candidates who ran in the local elections, and whose victory strengthened his starting position.

The classic right is numerically where it was, but it ceded Nice to the far right, which surely hurts.

And finally the far right, which, on the wings of favorable forecasts, certainly expected much more: the hoped-for breakthrough did not come. They increased the number of their representatives on municipal councils, but mostly in their traditional region in the south; there was no visible expansion elsewhere. Moreover, at least in the larger cities it became clear that the cordon sanitaire of the traditional parties, though weakened, is still alive. They failed both in Marseille and in Toulon, where they had led comfortably after the first round. When it comes to the far right, we must not forget Reconquête and Éric Zemmour. His private partner Sarah Knafo, born in 1994, achieved an incredible 10.4 percent in the first round in traditionally left-leaning Paris, exceeding all predictions. In the second round she withdrew in favor of Macron’s culture minister Rachida Dati—who nevertheless did not succeed. But it is a sign that the extreme far right will be able to stir the pot in future.

Besides Arcis-sur-Aube, there was another incredible story this time. In Strasbourg the socialist Catherine Trautmann won—a former mayor who first won in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. Eight years later she became culture minister in Lionel Jospin’s government, and in 2000 she was briefly mayor of Strasbourg once again. A quarter of a century later she has returned. And won. To win, she allied with the center-right, angering the Socialists. The day after the election her political godfather, one of the last of the great Mitterrandist socialists, Lionel Jospin, died. There is certainly a lot of symbolism in that too, which everyone interprets in their own way.

After the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon Bonaparte stayed on Elba for less than a year; Catherine Trautmann was in political exile considerably longer. Napoleon, like her, returned victorious. But then came Waterloo.

Whether cooperation with the center-right will pay off better for the new-old mayor, and perhaps find imitators at the national level, time will tell. Even after the local elections, everything is still open regarding France’s future path. We don’t know who the new president will be—the only thing that is clear is that it won’t be Emmanuel Macron.