France: far right wins towns, loses cities
France’s National Rally picked up 55 new municipalities on Sunday but failed to capture major urban centers like Marseille, Toulon and Paris, handing a tactical boost to mainstream centre-left and centre-right rivals. The mixed result — gains in smaller towns but losses in big cities — complicates Marine Le Pen’s path to 2027 and highlights fragmentation on the left as parties struggle to form unified anti‑nationalist coalitions. (reuters.com) (nytimes.com)
Emmanuel Grégoire was elected mayor of Paris on March 22, winning 50.52% of the second‑round vote to Rachida Dati’s 41.52% and taking 103 of the 163 seats on the Council of Paris. ( wikipedia.org ) In Marseille incumbent Benoît Payan held the city with about 54.3% of the vote against RN challenger Franck Allisio, according to final tallies released after the runoff. ( france24.com ) On the Riviera Éric Ciotti — running on a list allied with the RN — won Nice with roughly 48.5%, delivering a far‑right‑aligned victory in France’s fifth‑largest city. ( ouest-france.fr ) The RN also consolidated Perpignan, where incumbent Louis Aliot was re‑elected in the first round with about 50.6% of the vote. ( ladepeche.fr ) Former prime minister Édouard Philippe was re‑elected mayor of Le Havre with 47.71% of the second‑round vote, a result French business daily Les Echos framed as bolstering his positioning ahead of the 2027 presidential landscape. ( francebleu.fr ) ( lesechos.fr ) The two‑round vote on March 15 and 22 covered roughly 34,800–35,000 communes nationwide with more than 1,500 runoffs on March 22, and official local government portals and ministry pages published constituency‑level results as counts closed. ( interieur.gouv.fr ) ( reuters.com ) Widespread left‑wing fragmentation forced city‑by‑city alliance making before the runoffs, with Emmanuel Grégoire publicly declining to form a formal list alliance with La France Insoumise’s Sophia Chikirou in Paris even as local pacts shaped outcomes elsewhere. ( politico.eu )
