French voters are heading to the ballot boxes on March 15 and 22.
This time for municipal elections – but it would be foolhardy to dismiss those as irrelevant.
After President Macron’s 2024 gamble, France’s political landscape is fragmented as a shattered mirror.
With 34,875 communes, municipal elections are crucial in the French political sphere. The more so as municipal councillors and mayors are the ones ‘feeling the fire’ right on their skins, being the closest to the electorate and its daily problems.
The ballot will be an opportunity to get insights into national political trends and critical issues. It’ll also be a chance to measure where support for the competing parties stands and to search for potential alliances in the divided nation ahead of the 2027 presidential campaign.
The greatest interest surrounds the ‘far-right’ National Rally (NR) – and its hopes to shift the political sphere further to the right, reversing the previous shift to the Left in 2020.
With the current situation on national level spiralling downwards to municipalities – the NR’s chances are growing further. On local level, the NR still lags behind the mainstream parties – but the trend is upward moving and steady.
The party has approximately 650 candidate lists, a significant increase from previous elections.
Polls indicate varying dynamics across the country, but most sondages put NR, or NR supported, candidates in strong positions in several big cities (Avignon, Carcassone, Marseille, Chin, Mulhouse, Nice, Perpignan, Toulon, etc.)
Disillusion with the political establishment is at all time height, given the centrist parties’ inability to stabilize national political life, basically paralysing the whole country. Market sentiments are reflecting the political turmoil: last September, the French bond yield reached 14-year high fuelled by the persistent government crises.
President Macron’s planned reforms (taxes, budget, pensions, to name a few) all fell flat, causing uproar and voter dissatisfaction, alienating the electorate from the president. Today, Macron is deeply unpopular and politically weakened.
NR policy initiatives are more in line with voter expectations – addressing the issues that matter to the average French citizen, as opposed to the elitist approach of President Macron and his allies. French voters are searching for new representation – for the same reasons voters everywhere else in Europe do. Social tensions caused by irregular immigration. Public security. Housing and cost-of-living crisis. Economic stagnation.
The RN’s current support shows not only a direct shift in France’s social structure – but also the party’s own evolution.
Once the pariah and renegade of the political sphere with limited influence and less coherent policies mainly focused on identity – the NR today is a party with strong identity and strong policies.
Its economic policy is a combination of protectionism, tax cuts and a focus on national industries, along with ensuring energy independence.
The aim is to reposition France within the EU as a capable economic power – the party gave up demanding a ‘Frexit’ a while ago, focusing instead on reforming the EU from within. The demands include more defence on the borders, stricter migration policies and more role for national parliaments.
As the results on consecutive national elections show – these policy ideas, representing a turn towards a more sovereignist approach, are in line with shifting voter expectations.
The upcoming municipal elections will show whether these sentiments have reached a tipping point on local level, too.
