Except for a new dissolution of the National Assembly, it will be the last step before the presidential election. The municipal elections, the two towers of which are scheduled in March 2026, traditionally play on local issues. How to renovate the city center? What to do to attract new traders? Will we be able to avoid the increase in land taxes? Are we going to undergo class closings? And, for political forces, it is above all a question of preserving and winning cities.
And yet, “One year from the presidential election, even if this ballot responds to a very local logic, the municipal elections will inevitably have a dimension of test gallop”notes Jérôme Fourquet, director of the “opinion” department at Ifop.
In the municipal elections of 2001, the Socialist Party (PS) had obtained results in trompe-l’oeil (a defeat compensated by some vibrant victories, as in Paris or Lyon), which were perhaps announcing the route of 2002. But political life is today disinterested, warns Jean-Yves Dormagen, professor of political science at the University of Montpellier: those who dominate the national scene are absent from local political life. The Republicans (LR) and the PS preserved their municipal leadership in 2020, but were laminated in the presidential election of 2022.
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