Long delayed second round of French municipal elections (first round happened in the week the Corona lockdown ramped up) today. Participation is dreadfully low.
Greens poised to win in Lyon, Bordeaux, and Strasbourg which is kind of a big deal. Bordeaux apparently just elected right wing mayors straight in first round for the last 73 years. The Greens (or Green-led leftist coalitions to be precise) did very well tonight.
Lille was close but the Socialist dynasty in ever decaying coal land embodied by Martine Aubry should continue agonizing for a few more years. Socialists also kept Paris.
The party will move again, barely 3 years in the suburbs to "reconnect with the working class", back in Paris in a much smaller office space.
Communists lost southern Arles after 19 years. Saint-Denis, the biggest Paris suburb, lost too... To the Socialists. They might win back another suburb though, Bobigny.
Marseille will probably be taken by an ex-Green / moderate left coalition.
Macron's Prime Minister keeps his seat in Le Havre.
The far-right RN Louis Aliot, which was a long time life partner of party head Marine Le Pen, takes Perpignan which I guess decided it was time they became a stereotypical French southeast city full of jaded racists. The united "republican front" failed. It's the first city with over 100k inhabitants to ever elect a RN mayor.
The far-right also keeps Béziers (76k inhabitants) though incumbent Robert Ménard (Yes the Reporters Without Borders founder turned wank dad) is not a card carrying RN member.
Doesn't seem "Macronism" is taking any local roots still. I'm sure they won some too, or at least conservative LR mayors they endorsed did. Apparently the latest objective was to have 10k city council members tonight... Out of a national total of 560k offices.
It's really kind of weird how top-down with no actual trickling down the whole Macron story is. A favourite past time of pundits since his election is to wonder if Macronism exists outside of Macron and the answer decidedly leans to "No". And with the whole Corona thing reminding him that he is not "Jupiter, master of time" commandeering events at his whim and forcing him into managing disaster rather than pushing some grand third way reform of France, the ideological print will be rather thin on the whole back half of his mandate.
