Razzia on the big cities: Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Strasbourg, Annecy, Poitiers, Tours, Besançon, Colombes… Beware of the electoral temptation to want to adopt extremist ecological measures at the national level in the wake of this electoral wave which does not concern that a certain category of the population, that of the big cities, that rather affluent, forgetting the population of the peripheries!
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These 2020 municipal elections were atypical until the end. The second round of municipal elections which took place this Sunday, June 28, 2020 suffered the same disaffection as in the first round, worse even to the extent that it was especially in the big cities that we revote. Around 60% abstention, the cause of which is not yet very certain, between fear of coronavirus, mind deliberately elsewhere after a difficult period of confinement and this desire to end it, to rediscover the great outdoors, to take vacations, especially for many employees exhausted by working conditions during the crisis, and also the disappointments of a new army of job seekers… Everything is a little different from before.
In detail, all parties could find their joys: LREM with the re-election of the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe in Le Havre (around 59%), which finds itself in a situation of great political force within the presidential majority (dismissing him in a few days would be incomprehensible), the PS with the re-election ofAnne Hidalgo, the victory in Nancy and in Montpellier (Michaël Delafosse), and the maintenance in many other cities, the RN obviously with the election in Perpignan of Louis Aliot which could seriously compete his (ex?) companion for the next presidential race, the parliamentary right which won some cities (like Lorient with the election of Fabrice Loher) but which also loses, and above all, the environmentalists.
And it was the environmentalists who won the municipal elections of 2020, and beware of the conclusions of the Citizen’s Climate Convention the next day. It is clear that those who voted do not represent all the French: massive abstention and ballot only in the cities that required a second round. Environmentalists have won Lyon (this is probably the event of the evening and the complete failure of Gérard Collomb), also Annecy (one tenth of% against the outgoing mayor), Strasbourg, Tours, Poitiers, Colombes, Besançon, Bordeaux (a shock for the successor ofAlain Juppe), Grenoble (re-election of Éric Piolle with 50.3% in a quadrangular with Alain Carignon 25.3%), and in Lille, it took a hair (227 votes) for Martine Aubry fell before the ecological wall (all the estimates that came out of the ballot boxes gave her the loss).
The fall of Martine Aubry could even have been a relief for the PS who would have thus lost a guardian figure of the old world. And this extremely glorious little glorious election is offset by the excellent but distressing performance of Anne Hidalgo which can also be attributed to the environmentalists with whom she had allied in the second round. Compensated also by the success in certain cities, like, alas predictably, in Nancy where Laurent Hénart lost to Matthieu Klein, but also in some cities like Saint-Brieuc which passes to the left, the outgoing majority having been congested by a multiplication of candidacies. In Marseille, the situation is still a little vague, which is certain, it is the victory for the voices of the left list led by Michèle Rubirola, but it is difficult to “label it”, between an almost hard left and an environmental list (it is a bit of both) and the system somewhat particular electoral campaign in Marseille (concocted by Gaston Defferre to keep the city even without an absolute majority of votes) could even make him miss the town hall because it seems to me that this list does not have an absolute majority of seats on the municipal council.
Despite the success of Perpignan (and the election of Romain Lopez in Moissac), the RN has nothing to show off in this election which was not favorable anyway. While the PS and the right and the center can still believe in a clear persistence in political life. In Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc finally won with a less tight result than expected.
Let’s take a few cities won or maintained on the right: Colmar (Éric Straumann), Mulhouse, Narbonne, Saint-Malo (Gérard Lurton), Aix-en-Provence (Maryse Jossains-Masini reelected), Limoges, Nice (Christian Estrosi reelected), Metz (François Grosdidier’s victory was however very close, with less than 200 votes apart from the candidate on the left).
The PS may regret the failure ofAlain Claeys (beaten by an ecological list led by a young woman of 30 years full of dynamism) in Poitiers, but can be happy to maintain a whole series of cities, starting with Paris, and also: Rouen, Rennes, Brest, Quimper, Le Mans (great victory for Stéphane Le Foll), Nantes (re-election of Johanna Rolland), Dijon (François Rebsamen with 43.5%), not counting the conquest of Nancy. The PS would even like to believe in a PS-EELV axis which is completely illusory under current conditions (outside Paris). In La Rochelle, without political stake, the outgoing mayor Jean-François Fountaine beat his rival Olivier Falorni with 181 votes in advance. In Orléans, the former mayor LR Serge Grouard largely beat the outgoing ex-LR mayor who went to LREM Olivier Carré.
Paradoxically, even if it is difficult not to speak of failure for the presidential majority (the failure ofAgnes Buzyn in Paris, the failure of many LREM candidates in large cities such as Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, etc. (often in the first round moreover) should not, however, make us forget beautiful re-elections, that of Gérald Darmanin in Tourcoing from the first round, that of Edouard Philippe in Le Havre (Emmanuel Macron congratulated him in the evening and they see each other this Monday, June 29, 2020 at 10 a.m.), that of François Bayrou in Pau, by Franck Riester, etc.
Very generally, it is really difficult to give a national trend, except for the victory of the ecologists in the big cities, and an ecology of the far left and of degrowth. Obviously, there was a real need for renewal, municipalities on the right fell on the left, others on the left fell on the right, and when the left persists, it is also through alliance with environmentalists (as in Paris, while without an alliance, as in Lille, the PS is very weak).
What is clear is that receiving the Citizens’ Climate Convention at the Élysée Palace after the municipal elections was not a coincidence: Emmanuel Macron would like to finish his five-year term as the President of the Republic who took take into account the climate issue. However, the victory of environmentalists at the municipal level risks precipitating decisions sometimes taken without any rational consideration.
It should be remembered that in the aftermath of the regional elections of March 1992, which had seen the environmental currents carried by 12% of the voters (divided into Ecological Generation and The Greens), the President François Mitterrand, by electoralism, had taken stupid decisions in particular by sabotaging the great French competence on the breeder, condemning the power station of Creys-Malvile until turning it into a pitiful giant trash can (shame on this electoralism!). This was not enough to avoid the historic socialist debacle of March 1993 which culminated in the tragic suicide of Pierre Bérégovoy.
I hope that President Emmanuel Macron will be able to keep reason in the face of this ecological pressure which will soon decline when all the big cities. The return of the pendulum will be able to be fast when the inhabitants of the peripheries of the big agglomerations (of which were mainly composed the yellow vests) will realize that they will no longer be able to drive in their center city at all. Punitive ecology has never been a way to convince citizens of the urgency to make decisions. It will only increase the battalions of its opponents who will seek elsewhere the listening they have lost to the most rational.
Sylvain Rakotoarison (June 28, 2020)
http://www.rakotoarison.eu
For further :
Municipal 2020 (5): the premium for … green?
Municipal 2020 (4): soon, the end of a suspense.
Municipal 2020 (3): and the second round came …
Municipal 2020 (2): the coronavirus invites itself into the countryside.
Municipal 2020 (1): back to the old world?
The municipal elections of March 2014.
The municipal elections of March 2008.
Local ballots: what has changed.
Electronic voting, for or against?
The ambitious.
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