French municipal elections: round 1

This is not quite an instant analysis and I don’t have much to say about yesterday’s vote that isn’t being said by everyone else, which is that it was a disastrous result for the Socialists—worse than anyone expected or that was projected in polls—, an excellent one for the Front National, and not at all bad for the UMP, and with the backdrop a record abstention rate for this kind of election (39%), reflecting a demobilization of the Socialist party’s base. PS voters disproportionately stayed home—and one needs to specify that it was indeed PS voters, as the other constituents of the left, i.e. the écolos and Front de Gauche, did well where they ran separate lists. The Socialists are not even trying to spin the result. Patrick Menucci, the PS mayoral candidate in Marseille—who finished in third place (behind the FN) with a paltry 21% citywide, a calamitous score that absolutely no one anticipated—, bravely insisted on France Inter this morning that he could make up his 17 point deficit with Jean-Claude Gaudin but one doubts anyone believes this (including Menucci himself). In my own very right-wing banlieue, where I manned a polling station yesterday (photo below) as an assesseur-titulaire (for the PS-EELV-MRC-PRG-MUP list), the total score of the two left lists was 18%, compared with 21% in both the 2008 and 2001 municipal elections (and with François Hollande receiving 40% in the 2nd round of the 2012 presidential).

Two comments. First, on the FN’s result. It was certainly very good for the frontistes but is, objectively speaking, not that big of a deal. So the FN’s secretary-general Steeve Briois won a narrow outright victory (50.3%) last night in Hénin-Beaumont, a depressed industrial town of 25,000 souls in which the party has been investing political resources for years and that Marine Le Pen won with 55% in the 2012 legislative election (losing the larger constituency by a hair). It’s about time the FN won that sorry place. As for Béziers, where the FN-supported Robert Ménard will most certainly be elected mayor next Sunday, it should be specified that he is not an FN member and doesn’t even issue from the extreme right. He was a founder of the civil libertarian Reporters sans Frontières in the 1980s, hung out more with leftists than rightists back then, and was engaged with bona fide, mostly left-wing Algerian democrats who opposed both the military-backed regime and Islamists as that country descended into internecine bloodletting in the 1990s (a product of Ménard’s then support of Algerian democrats was this book). Ménard—whom I don’t know personally but used to see around—was/is a flamboyant, bloviating self-promoter—and, IMO, an insufferable jerk (e.g. the kind who incessantly talks very loudly into his mobile phone in public)—who has found a new outlet for his flamboyant, bloviating self-promotion in Marine Le Pen and the hard right of the political spectrum. It will be most interesting to see how he and his frontiste associates run a city of 71K inhabitants, a third of whom live with less than €1000/month. Likewise with Gilbert Collard, the near certain mayor-to-be of Saint-Gilles, likewise a self-promoter extraordinaire and whose political parcours spans the far right to the far left and everything in between (as I noted two years ago here). The FN managing a handful of municipalities—as many as ten and possibly including Perpignan (but please, not Avignon)—would be a good thing IMO, as Marine LP & Co will finally have some concrete political responsibilities and a bilan to defend. For a party whose national electoral support has been in the teens for the past three decades, it is only normal that it should have at least a few elected officials in executive positions. But again, the number of communes it will be running will only be a drop in the bucket: less than one percent of municipalities with a population of over 10,000. And that will be as good as it gets for the FN.

Second comment. The PS may be able to limit the damage next Sunday via at least a partial mobilization of its electorate. Maybe. In Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who very unexpectedly finished behind Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet citywide, will still likely win next Sunday (as merged PS-EELV lists in the 4th, 9th, 12th, and 14th arrondissements will be en ballotage favorable, and may even take the 5th arrondissement if the right’s warring lists there don’t merge; we’ll know after tomorrow night’s deadline for merging and reconstituting lists). Martine Aubry in Lille, Gérard Collomb in Lyon, and Jean-Marc Ayrault’s successor in Nantes will also win, despite sharp fall-offs in the PS vote yesterday. And Toulouse and Strasbourg look doable. So it ain’t over till it’s over.

But whatever happens next Sunday the municipal elections will still have constituted a big setback for the PS and President Hollande, meaning that there will be a governmental remaniement sooner rather than later and most certainly with a new prime minister. As for what good that will do and if it will change anyone’s fortunes, allez savoir… RDV la dimanche prochaine.

Arun manning the ballot box, March 23 2014