Return to normality also means a return to democracy. France, unlike other European countries, has suspended the football championship, but on the other hand it is the first to try its hand at return to the polls after the lockdown. On Sunday, June 28, the whole country will vote for the second round of municipal elections: the first round, which took place in the very distant last March 15, involved over 35.000 Municipalities (in France there is only one round for all), among which in more than 30.000 cases (the many rural realities) the mayor has already been elected. Only 5.000 remain to be assigned (with almost 160.000 candidates involved in the ballots), which however are the most important because they concern the largest cities including Paris, where the outgoing mayor, the socialist Anne Hidalgo, fly towards reconfirmation.
This is why this round, albeit conditioned by the virus which will lead abstention to very high levels (60% is estimated, after 55% in the first round), nonetheless has the value of a national vote, and therefore of a testing ground for the Macron government: in fact, 16,5 million French are called to the polls, almost 40% of the electorate. The most important game is played right on the capital. Anne Hidalgo, ex mayor Bertrand Delanoe's right arm for two terms (she has been attending the Hotel de Ville for twenty years), shouldn't have major problems: she has already won in the first round with 29,3% of the votes, against 22,7. XNUMX% of the centre-right candidate and former minister with Sarkozy, Rachida Dati, and 17,2% of the Macronian and former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn (Paris is one of the 786 Municipalities where the ballot is at three, and in 155 cities it is even at four).
Polls give Hidalgo at 45%, against Dati's 34% and Buzyn's 20%. The candidate of La République en Marche, the president's party, is therefore heading towards a modest result, precisely in the city that crowned Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée three years ago, with 90% of preferences in the ballot with Marine Le Pen. The campaign for LREM was disastrous: first the presence of the dissident Cédric Villani, then the sex scandal of Benjamin Griveaux, finally the hasty candidacy of the former head of Health, which led to a challenge between only women. Hidalgo has good popularity, he obtained the 2024 Summer Olympics, and has staked the entire electoral campaign on the environment and sustainable mobility, gaining the support of the Greens, who in France are still a party that "moves".
Considered by her opponents as a "radical chic" (across the Alps they say "bobò", which stands for bourgeois bohémiens), the mayor born in Spain has won acclaim with her calm and is making Paris an ever greener city and "slow". Some proposals are even revolutionary and motorists won't like them: Hidalgo wants to bring the maximum speed allowed to 30 km/h throughout the city, except on major arteries; wants to add 50 km of cycle paths, to cover practically 100% of the roads; has launched the “ville du quart d'heure” (quarter-hour city) project, i.e. making sure that every citizen, thanks to public transport and soft mobility, can reach any destination in 15 minutes. By virtue of the result she is about to achieve, some would even like her as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in 2022, but she has already said she is not interested.
But if Paris is Paris, what happens instead in the rest of the country? According to polls, several strongholds could fall, on the right as on the left. The center-left is almost everywhere divided, with Macron's party and "everyone else" running on their own. Despite this, the candidate of the left could reconquer Marseilles, which had recently become a centre-right stronghold. Same script should materialize at Montpellier. As proof that environmental issues are very fashionable in France, a Lyon the Greens are even favoured, within a centre-left coalition which is also about to conquer the government of the metropolitan area. The Greens themselves threaten the outgoing mayor (she has been in office since 2001) Martine Aubry, historical exponent of the Socialist Party, of which she was also secretary.
LREM candidates have hardly reached the ballots, but they will tip the balance. Generally in favor of the centre-left, but not always: a Bordeaux for example, the outgoing mayor of the Republican party will receive the support of Macron's list. But despite this, he seriously risks losing, once again to the ecologists. TO Le Havre the Prime Minister and outgoing mayor of the northern city, Edouard Philippe, ran for office, but he has made it clear that in case of re-election he will remain as head of government, pending an increasingly probable reshuffle in the fall. Despite the lack of popularity of this government, Philippe garnered 43% of the votes in the first round (in 2014 he was directly elected).
Finally, the big loser of this round: Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National. If it is true that LREM did not sparkle, that of RN instead is a real flop: after the presidential ballot won in 2017, the far right installed only 3 mayors in the first round, and on Sunday 28 June the only candidate with a good chance of winning is that of Perpignan. In France the wind is changing. And also the voting methods: due to the Covid-19 emergency, voting in polling stations will be electronic (and with all the usual measures, from masks to distancing) and the Ministry of the Interior is explicitly encouraging voting by proxy. However, it will be difficult to find someone to delegate to, given that few will go to vote.
