The far-right National Rally’s hopes of winning its largest cities yet were dashed on Sunday as its candidates suffered defeat in the cities of Toulon and Nîmes, a week after leading the first-round vote in both.
Le Pen's party also fell short in France's second-largest city Marseille, this time by a considerable margin, despite its candidate polling neck-and-neck with the incumbent Socialist mayor last week.
There was some consolation, however, in the Riviera city of Nice, where veteran politician Eric Ciotti defeated the longtime centre-right mayor, thereby putting a Le Pen ally – though not a member of the National Rally – in charge of France’s fifth-largest city.
The eurosceptic, anti-immigrant party has traditionally underperformed in municipal polls, particularly in large urban areas where voters remain hostile to the Le Pen brand. It was hoping for breakthrough wins to bolster its credibility ahead of the 2027 presidential bout.
A key question for the party was whether it would be able to strike alliances between the two rounds – or at least chip away at the so-called “Republican Front” that for decades has seen rival parties band together to shut it out.
RN candidates found no runoff partners. And defeats like the one in Toulon, where the RN candidate had a 13-point lead over her nearest challenger in the first round, suggests the anti-far-right vote is resilient, at least in large urban centres.
But small-town France offered a different picture, with the far right capturing left-wing bastions like Vierzon and Liévin, a former mining town in the Calais region, as well as the southwestern citadels of Carcassonne and Castres.
It was enough for party president Jordan Bardella, a possible presidential candidate should Marine Le Pen be barred from running next year due to an embezzlement conviction, to claim the "greatest breakthrough" in the party's history.
‘Alliances of shame’
Elsewhere, the focus was on the results of hastily arranged left-wing alliances that included the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) – which right-wing opponents had labelled “alliances of shame”.
The mainstream left's often fraught relations with LFI further soured last month after the fatal beating of a far-right activist by suspected radical left militants, which led to the arrest of two parliamentary aides working for an LFI lawmaker.
In the run-up to the elections, the Socialist Party had sought to portray LFI as politically untouchable, accusing its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon of making "intolerable anti-Semitic remarks".
While the Socialists ruled out a nationwide alliance with LFI, several of their candidates rushed to strike second-round deals with hard-left rivals to maximise their chances of victory over the right.
How these matchups would fare at the polls was seen as a key indicator of voters’ appetite for a united left that includes Mélenchon’s party.
While LFI candidates scored big wins in a handful of major suburbs of Paris, Lyon and Lille, the party's traditional bastions, results elsewhere were sobering.
In Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city and home of its aeronautics industry, LFI’s François Piquemal was defeated by the incumbent conservative mayor, despite left-wing candidates having picked up a combined 52.5% of the first-round vote.
A similar alliance led by an LFI candidate was also soundly beaten in Limoges, while left-wing incumbents that had struck deals with Mélenchon’s party were ousted in the likes of Clermont-Ferrand, Poitiers and Besançon.
Beating the extremes
Critics of LFI were quick to blame it for those defeats, with former Socialist president François Hollande warning that “unity for the sake of unity” would lead the left to “an impasse” and calling for a clarification of the party’s strategy.
Such calls were further bolstered by the success of left-wing candidates who had shunned Mélenchon’s party – most notably in Paris and Marseille.
In the French capital, Socialist frontrunner Emmanuel Grégoire trounced his conservative rival Rachida Dati, even as he refused to team up with an LFI rival, thereby splitting the left-wing vote. Marseille’s left-wing incumbent Benoît Payan adopted the same strategy in France’s second-largest city and comfortably saw off a far-right challenger.
Read moreEmmanuel Grégoire elected Paris mayor, succeeding fellow left-winger Anne Hidalgo
On the mainstream right, former prime minister Édouard Philippe pushed a similar line as he celebrated his re-election in the northern port city of Le Havre, having seen off a Communist challenger and a far-right rival in a three-way race.
A high-profile contender for the Élysée Palace, Philippe had put his presidential ambitions on the line, suggesting he might drop out of the race if he failed to win re-election in Le Havre.
Addressing jubilant supporters, he said Sunday's results offered "reasons to be hopeful" that French voters would "beat back extremist forces".
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