Elections. Val-de-Marne is no longer the “last communist department in France”

The second round of regional elections on Sunday confirmed a massive abstention and the bonus given by voters to outgoing PS and LR. But that’s not all: the departmental elections, which also took place this Sunday, saw the right grab new territories.

One decision is particularly striking: “The Republican right is tilting the last Communist department of France, Val-de-Marne”, welcomed Sunday evening Valérie Pécresse, outgoing president and reelected in Île-de-France.

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Four cantons switch

It is true: the local alliance of the right (Les Républicains, UDI, Libres!), The list “Together reveil the Val-de-Marne”, led by Olivier Capitanio, won the departmental elections in the Val-de -Marne, facing the left alliance of Christian Favier (French Communist Party, PCF), at the head of the department since 2001.

This result is due to the shift to the right of four cantons, according to The Parisian. That of Champigny-sur-Marne-1, stronghold of Christian Favier, where the right of Libres! won 52.47% of the vote, and that of Champigny-2, with 52.04% of the vote for UDI Jean-Pierre Barnaud. The canton of Choisy-le-Roi, too, fell into the hands of the right with 55.9% of the votes for the LR list. Similarly, after a tight first round, the canton of Haÿ-les-Roses now returns to the union of the right, with 51.92% of the vote.

In total, the alliance of the right and the center won 14 cantons in Val-de-Marne, against 11 for the left. Revenge for Olivier Capitanio, LR mayor of Maisons-Alfort, who has already appeared against Christian Favier during the 2015 departmental rounds, which he had lost.

“This is a historic event, at the level of our department and beyond. This victory expresses the desire for change that we had felt in recent years,” said Olivier Capitanio on Sunday.

“Attached to republican values, I congratulated the leader of the right Olivier Capitanio but I measure the consequences for the Val-de-Marnais of a right omnipresent in the region, the department and in many municipalities”, a for his part reacted Christian Favier in a press release Sunday evening.

Communist since the 1970s

Already last year, the Communists had received a serious warning during the municipal elections: the historic bastions of Champigny-sur-Marne (the town of Georges Marchais, ruled by the PCF since 1950), Choisy-le-Roi (1959) or Valenton (under the red flag since 1920 and the Congress of Tours) had fallen into the hands of the right.

Val-de-Marne was not always a Communist department. If he had been held by the PCF since 1966, he experienced an interruption between 1970 and 1976, during which the UDR (Union of Democrats for the Republic) Roland Nungesser was at its head. And in this territory, the Communists have always won by a narrow majority over their right-wing opponents.

Val-de-Marne, on the other hand, was the last department led by a PCF since the regional elections of 2015, in which the Communists lost the Allier, after having already ceded their bastion of Seine-Saint-Denis in 2008.

In addition, the same Seine-Saint-Denis is now the last department of Île-de-France held by the left, thanks to the victory on Sunday of the Union of the Left and the ecologists, who won 54.96 % voices.

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