Interview
A large number of mayors were elected in the first round, on March 15. Is 2020 a record year in this area?
No. Since 1977, the average of councils and mayors elected in the first round has been around 84% of the municipalities. We are at 86% this year, it is above the average, more than in 2014 (82%) but it is not the record. What can give this impression is the high number of small municipalities in which everything was settled as of March 15. In cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants, on the other hand, the percentage of mayors elected in the first round is lower than in previous years.
What is this due to?
A significant increase in the number of lists presented in major cities. The average number of lists presented in the first round was 1.8 in municipalities with less than 30,000 inhabitants, compared to six in municipalities with more than 30,000 whose outgoing mayor was represented, and seven when he did not represent himself . The multiplication of lists leads to a fragmentation of votes which reduces the probability that a candidate will be elected in the first round.
Were there also an unprecedented number of “citizen lists”?
This is still true for the big cities, not for the intermediate cities, and it is largely linked to the last municipal ones, marked by a strong “clearance”. In 2014, many mayors, sometimes beaten in the first round when they presented a quite honorable record, had paid for their membership of a party. To protect themselves from this, the 2020 candidates tended to remove all references to their political family (on posters, professions of faith, leaflets, etc.) and put forward running mate “From civil society”. Some did so because they could not gather enough members of their parties to put together a complete list.
Was abstention a record in the first round?
There, yes, without question. Never had we voted so little in a first round of municipal elections under the Ve Republic, and even the IVe. This very low participation (20 points difference compared to 2014) is directly linked to the Covid. The departments which experienced cases the week before the election are clearly below the national average. This is true in the Great East, but also in Ariège, Lot-et-Garonne, Morbihan where a cluster (home) had declared itself… The two main sources of participation in elections are age and level of education. The older we are, the more educated we are, the more we vote. The education factor did not play a role here. The age one, however.
Will there be consequences for the legitimacy of the newly elected officials?
Mayors are less exposed to this type of criticism than national elected officials, but the level of participation has been so low that it can create real tensions. We still have 18% of the mayors elected in the first round who were elected with the votes of less than 25% of the registered voters of their municipality. In the event of a local conflict, the argument risks going out. The candidates suffer from it just as much as the voters, some having had the feeling of seeing the exercise of their citizenship undermined.
Can we hope for a start
of participation this Sunday?
The intentions to participate are rather alarmist, on levels that seem to be quite close to those of March 15, but we must not forget that we vote less in big cities than in small ones. However, two thirds of the 16.5 million voters who have to go to the polls live in cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants. The usual average participation rate for municipal elections is around 50%, compared to 75% in cities of less than 30,000. Participation should therefore be naturally low, without necessarily being linked to the health crisis this time.
Even in cities where the match promises to be close?
You may have a start in cities where you only have two neck-and-neck lists. Not in those with three or more lists, even in the event of a close match.
What will the new generation of mayors look like?
There will be more women in their ranks. We should reach nearly 20% of women mayors in 2020, against 16% in 2014. And this is a generation that starts out in totally exceptional conditions. The mayors elected on March 15 are very worried about the economic consequences of the crisis and the means they can mobilize to deal with it. After the difficult mandate of the years 2014-2020, the figure of the builder mayor, dominant from the 1980s, seems irretrievably gone …
Martial Foucault posted Mayors on the verge of a nervous breakdown, editions of Aube, 184 pages, € 17.
– .
