Paris
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Paris has been a socialist city for 25 years, but this year’s elections are the most uncertain in decades.
Opinion polls so far show Socialist Party candidate Emmanuel Grégoire ahead of conservative challenger Rashida Dati in the race to succeed Anne Hidalgo, the mayor who has led the French capital for three terms. But behind the apparent stability of Parisian politics, last Sunday’s first round of voting reflected a significant electoral shift in local elections widely seen as the springboard and bellwether for France’s political parties a year before the presidential election.
For the first time in history, Parisians voted for both far-left and far-right candidates in the second round. This reflects a national trend of increasing fragmentation and polarization of the electorate, strengthening populist poles at both ends of the spectrum at the expense of France’s traditional parties.
Of the five candidates who passed, only three will run. France’s voting system for local elections involves list and proportional representation, and a lot tends to happen between two votes, including candidates forming tactical alliances or abstaining entirely.
Grégoire teamed up with the center-right candidate for fourth place after defeating Dati by 12 points last Sunday. Dati received a further boost this week after Sara Knafo, a far-right candidate seeking to oust socialists from City Hall, withdrew to avoid splitting the right.
Knafo made history by winning nearly 10% of the vote thanks to a remarkable campaign that used Zoran Mamdani-like tactics on social media to deliver a very MAGA message about immigration and crime. Her party, Reconquette, was only formed in 2021 and stands to the right of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. A study published ahead of the first round suggested that Knafo was helped by X’s algorithm, and her videos received three times as many views as Dati.
Still, the fact that a far-right candidate made it to the second round in the liberal stronghold of Paris reflects a national trend of a more polarized electorate abandoning traditional political parties in favor of populists on both the far left and far right.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has won a historic number of seats in both parliamentary elections since President Emmanuel Macron won a second term in 2022, setting a record with 89 seats in 2022 and surpassing that in 2024 with 143 seats, making it the largest single party in parliament.
Therefore, the French capital is an outlier. The two traditionally moderate parties that Macron withheld from office in 2017 remain the top choices for voters in the capital. Nationally, voters are increasingly abandoning them in favor of populist alternatives.
For now, the center seems to be holding its own in Paris. Although not central to Macron. His failure to build a strong party after storming the Elysée Palace is considered one of the reasons why French politics has become more unstable, more fragmented, and more extreme.
Opinion polls earlier in the week in the run-up to Sunday’s vote showed a close race between Grégoire and Daty, but no matter who wins, the two parties that have dominated French politics for decades are unlikely to be able to repeat their electoral success in Paris in next year’s presidential election. The first round made clear that even in the City of Lights, populists on both the left and right are gaining ground and looming.
