French far-right leader Marine Le Pen hailed Hungary’s Viktor Orbán for blocking a €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine. “I’d prefer it if we didn’t have to wait for other countries to take good decisions,” Le Pen told reporters on a trip to Budapest for a meeting of the Patriots for Europe group, of which her National Rally and Orbán’s Fidesz are members. Le Pen argued that France could no longer afford to support Ukraine’s war effort due to its high deficit and debt levels. “France is ruined, our public finances don’t allow us today to make loans we know won’t be reimbursed,” she said. “France has to become reasonable … and keep the money for French citizens.” Also in Hungary for the meeting are Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders and Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. Hungary goes to the polls on April 12, and the National Rally leader lent Orbán her firm backing on Monday on X, saying she was “very honored” to support him. On Saturday, Hungary held a European edition of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), which included a video message from U.S. President Donald Trump, who reiterated his “complete and total” backing for Orbán. Le Pen was not present at the CPAC gathering and said she wanted France to stay at a “distance” from the world’s great powers. “It doesn’t mean we don’t respect them, it just means we defend our interests and they defend theirs,” she said, adding that Trump’s tariff war against Europe proved why she needed to take this stance.

FRENCH FAR RIGHT CLAIMS MOMENTUM FOR PRESIDENCY AFTER LOCAL ELECTIONS Marine Le Pen’s National Rally failed to win big target cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes, but the party still thinks it has the upper hand nationwide. By CLEA CAULCUTT in Paris POLITICO illustration. The far-right National Rally may not have won the string of big target cities it was hoping for in France’s local election on Sunday, but its leaders said they had still built up a grassroots momentum that would propel them to victory in next year’s presidential contest. The 2027 presidential election is seen as a decisive moment for the EU as the Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic National Rally is the current favorite to win the race for the Elysée. This week’s municipal elections are being closely scrutinized to gauge whether Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party is still France’s predominant political force. All in all, it was a mixed night for the far right. Its biggest victory came on the Riviera, where one of its allies won Nice, France’s fifth-biggest city. The National Rally had also campaigned hard in other significant southern cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes. It performed well in all of them but was beaten into second place. The races were close in Toulon and Nîmes, and Le Pen’s party won 40 percent of the vote in Marseille — a considerable share in France’s diverse and cosmopolitan second city. Putting a positive spin on the results, the party leaders stressed that they had won numerous smaller and mid-sized cities and towns, particularly in their southern heartlands, such as Carcassonne, Agde and Menton — adding to the first-round victory in Perpignan last week. National Rally President Jordan Bardella told supporters in Paris the far right had achieved the “biggest breakthrough of its history,” and was seizing “a strong momentum” that signaled “the end of an old world running out of steam.” National Rally mayoral candidate Laure Lavalette casts her ballot during the second round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Toulon on March 22, 2026. | Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images National Rally leader Le Pen meanwhile hailed “dozens” of regional victories and “a strategy of local implantation” that was working. STRONG NATIONWIDE, WEAKER IN BIG CITIES The National Rally’s argument is that traditional parties, particularly on the left, are strong in the big cities but that these do not fully reflect the wider national political currents, which are running toward the right. In Paris, for example, the National Rally candidate and MEP Thierry Mariani scored a dismal 1.6 percent of the vote in the first round on March 15, but nationwide Bardella is still the favorite for next year’s presidential election.   A Harris Interactive poll conducted after Sunday’s municipal elections confirmed Bardella’s position as frontrunner ahead of the 2027 race. Bardella would get 35 percent of the vote in the first round of voting, the survey said, 17 points ahead of the center-right contender, former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Still, the municipal election results will definitely reignite concerns among National Rally strategists about whether they really can win in a second round next year, given that the tradition of uniting against the far right in runoffs — something that helped crush Le Pen’s presidential bids in 2017 and 2022 — was on full display on Sunday. In the Mediterranean port city of Toulon, Laure Lavalette, a high-profile National Rally politician and close Le Pen ally, had a promising start in the first round of voting, winning 42 percent of the vote, 13 points ahead of the incumbent conservative mayor Josée Massi. But in Sunday’s runoff, Massi pulled ahead, benefitting from the withdrawal of a conservative candidate. The National Rally had hoped that its swell of support could break that second-round Achilles heel in these municipal elections but this perennial electoral vulnerability — that it is the party everyone gangs up against — looks set to persist. NO RESPITE FOR BARDELLA’S RIVALS The National Rally’s rivals are certainly not dismissing the far right because of its losses in the bigger cities on Sunday. Gabriel Attal, presidential hopeful and leader of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, said Sunday’s results showed a rise of the extremes, referring to not just the far-right National Rally but also the far-left France Unbowed, which won in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. “It’s a warning signal,” he said. “More and more citizens, who voted for them, want things to change, and to change more quickly.” For the conservative Les Républicains, Sunday’s elections were bittersweet. The right won the mayoral jobs in several mid-sized cities including Limoges, Tulle, Brest and Clermont-Ferrand. In France’s fourth city, Toulouse, a former conservative Jean-Luc Moudenc saw off a far-left challenger from France Unbowed, backed by a left-wing coalition. Les Républicains leader Bruno Retailleau on Sunday claimed the right was “the Number One local political force” in France. Les Républicains candidate Rachida Dati at a campaign rally after the announcement of her defeat in the second round of the 2026 Paris municipal elections on March 22, 2026. | Ian Langsdon/AFP via Getty Images But the right was wiped out in Paris, where former Culture Minister Rachida Dati lost to the Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire. And in France’s second-largest city Lyon, the conservative candidate Jean-Michel Aulas, a former football club owner, lost by a narrow margin to the Green incumbent mayor. Retailleau sought to cast the conservatives as the force that could appeal to voters wanting to shut out the extremes, and slammed the National Rally as “demagogues.” There is “a French way, expressed by millions of fellow citizens who want neither the social chaos of [France Unbowed] or the budgetary disorder that the [National Rally’s] economic manifesto would bring about,” he said.  But the Les Républicains party has several presidential hopefuls and no clear path to decide which one will represent them in the presidential race. On Sunday, conservative heavyweights were already calling for the right to agree on a candidate against Bardella. This race for a single candidate to emerge in the middle ground is also likely to accelerate because former Prime Minister Philippe, buoyed by his victory against a strong Communist challenger in Le Havre in Normandy, will now be looking to promote his candidacy. Bardella, by contrast, simply tried to present the National Rally’s onward progression toward the Élysée as inevitable. Borrowing a phrase from former President François Mitterrand’s campaign in 1981 to end the right’s dominance in France, Bardella said the National Rally was now “a tranquil force.” “Our successes are not an achievement, but a beginning,” he said. Laura Kayali contributed reporting.

PARIS — Everyone seems to have something to celebrate after runoffs in municipal elections across France that offer an early glimpse of the trends that will define next year’s presidential election to replace the term-limited Emmanuel Macron. The far-right National Rally made gains in mid-sized and smaller towns in the French heartland. The beleaguered conservative Les Républicains held on to most of the cities it already controlled and even picked up a few new ones. Macron’s Renaissance party now controls Bordeaux and Annecy, its first two big local wins. The center-left Socialist Party kept control of Paris and other large metropolises, while the hard-left France Unbowed picked up several working-class suburbs at the heart of its electoral strategy. Not everyone can be a victor. So here’s our picks of Sunday night’s most prominent winners and losers. WINNERS Emmanuel Grégoire: The soft-spoken 48-year-old catapulted into the ranks of France’s most important politicians after being handily elected mayor of Paris and extending the Socialist Party’s 25-year rule of the capital. He now counts Zohran Mamdani and Sadiq Khan as his peers.  Edouard Philippe’s presidential campaign: Macron’s former prime minister is currently seen in polls as the most likely candidate to advance to the runoff in the race for the Elysée, where he’d likely face off against the front-running National Rally. He had conditioned his bid for the Élysée on winning reelection as mayor of his hometown, Le Havre — a condition that has now been fulfilled. Philippe will hope this victory further boosts his candidacy as his political camp begins to mull what the future will look like after a 10-year Macron presidency. Eric Ciotti: The new far-right mayor of Nice, the unofficial capital of the French Riviera, tried two years ago to strike a deal with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally as the head of the conservative Les Républicains. He locked himself in party headquarters to prevent a coup, but the farcical effort failed and he was booted from the movement. That gamble has paid off, handing him the keys to France’s fifth-largest city. His win is also a partial victory for Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party, which now has a powerful ally, but Ciotti’s triumph was also the result of a local rivalry. His advocacy for mass privatizations and admiration for Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding libertarian President Javier Milei also doesn’t align with Le Pen’s self-description as being “neither left nor right” and defense of parts of the welfare state. The National Rally: Party President Bardella said the National Rally “achieved the greatest breakthrough in its entire history.” Le Pen said it won dozens of cities. Eric Ciotti salutes his supporters in Nice after the results of the second round of France’s 2026 municipal elections on March 22, 2026. | Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images LOSERS Also the National Rally: There is also reason for the far-right party to worry. The two-round voting system once again seemed to block the National Rally from victory in key targets like Nîmes and Toulon. And after a historic showing in the first round in Marseille, the party’s candidate was handily defeated in the runoff.    Emmanuel Macron: The French president had quietly thrown his weight behind Rachida Dati, his former culture minister, and former football executive Jean-Michel Aulas in Lyon. Dati conceded defeat and Aulas lost by a razor-thin margin, but he has announced a legal challenge of the result. Left-wing alliances: The hard-left France Unbowed and the center-left Socialist Party joined forces in cities across France to defend or capture town halls. But in Toulouse and Limoges — where Socialists backed France Unbowed candidates — as well as Clermont-Ferrand and Brest — where hard-left candidates supported moderates — left-wing alliances lost. The Greens: France’s environmentalists have lost control of several cities they won during the last municipal elections, held amid the Covid-19 pandemic, including the key metropolises of Strasbourg and Bordeaux. They can take some solace for now in a narrow projected win in Lyon, France’s third-largest city, and in the Alpine city of Grenoble — both secured through local alliances with France Unbowed.  François Bayrou: The centrist former prime minister, an iconic figure in French politics, lost in his own city of Pau just months after being ousted by a parliamentary no-confidence vote in September. It could mark the end of his decades-long political career.

PARIS — Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire is on course to become Paris’ next mayor, extending his party’s quarter-century rule of the French capital, according to multiple projections from pollsters. The left-wing candidate is on track to win 53.1  percent of votes in Sunday’s mayoral election runoff, per Ipsos’ initial estimate based on a partial vote count. His conservative adversary Rachida Dati is projected to come in second with 38 percent, while the hard-left candidate Sophia Chikirou is expected to come in third with 8.9 percent.  His supporters in Paris were are celebrating, singing “Emmanuel” and“On a gagné” (we won). After making a speech, he is expected to cycle to Paris city hall. Grégoire finished the first round 12 points clear of Dati, but the runoff was expected to be a tougher challenge after other right-wing candidates coalesced behind Dati’s campaign. Two candidates who qualified for the second round, the center-right former lawmaker Pierre-Yves Bournazel and far-right MEP Sarah Knafo, both left the race to avoid splitting the vote. Grégoire, however, chose not to team up with Chikirou on principle due to her party’s abrasive, confrontational approach to the local election. During the campaign, Grégoire, a protégé-turned-enemy of outgoing Mayor Anne Hidalgo, focused his message on solving the housing shortage and bringing down the cost of living. The 48-year-old had worked in Hidalgo’s administration for a decade in various top roles, including as her main deputy from 2018 until 2024, when he won a seat in the National Assembly. But Grégoire and Hidalgo’s messy falling out forced the candidate to distance himself from his former boss. That meant losing the opportunity to win votes by boasting about the successful Paris Olympics or the transformation of the banks of the Seine into a popular pedestrian area with cafés and restaurants.  The campaign got particularly heated ahead of the runoff, as he and Dati attacked each other with vitriol. Grégoire also accused President Emmanuel Macron of directly interfering to boost Dati, his former culture minister. Macron strongly rejected the assertion. 

NICE, France — The story of the far right’s probable victory in the French Riviera’s capital will probably be remembered largely because of an incident involving a pig’s head. But the race in Nice is also set to have broader implications ahead of France’s presidential election in 2027, reviving debate over whether the country’s weakened, traditional conservatives could ultimately merge forces with the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. A candidate allied with the anti-immigration National Rally is on track to become mayor of France’s fifth most populous city, famed for its sweeping, palm-lined Mediterranean beachfront. Eric Ciotti, 60, led the first round with 43.4 percent of the vote. The incumbent mayor, Christian Estrosi, a former industry minister under former right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, scored just over 30 percent and now faces a battle to claw his way back in Sunday’s runoff. “The people of Nice have expressed a desire to turn the page … The time for change has come,” a triumphant Ciotti said after the first-round vote. His lead was fueled by local rivalries, scandal and a feud with Estrosi that stretches back decades. The campaign took an ugly turn when a pig’s head, alongside a printed slur and a Star of David, was tied to the gate of Estrosi’s home — seen as a particularly gratuitous attack since his wife is Jewish. The case has now become even murkier. Estrosi initially blamed political opponents, but investigators are now exploring whether people within his own camp may have orchestrated the crime, the prosecutor said this month. Two arrests were made. Estrosi says he is the victim of “manipulation” and that he is awaiting the outcome of the investigation. Prosecutor Damien Martinelli said there was, so far, “no evidence” implicating anyone beyond those already identified, adding that Estrosi and his wife would be questioned as witnesses. TWO RIGHTS If Ciotti wins, the victory will ripple across the whole of France, well beyond the pebble beaches of the Côte d’Azur. It’s not just a story about a big city turning to an ally of Le Pen, but also one about whether the traditional conservative camp — the party of Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — could ultimately team up with the far right. For now, Bruno Retailleau, head of France’s main conservative party Les Républicains, has not gone that far, but his response to the bitter clash in Nice has reignited debate about whether there will ultimately be a “union of the rights” — an alliance between conservatives and nationalists. Earlier this week, he refused to endorse Estrosi for the runoff, despite the current mayor being officially backed by his party. Instead he took a “neither-nor” approach, calling on voters to follow their conscience in what he called a “harmful” campaign. What he conspicuously did not do — as earlier conservatives did — is call for Les Républicains’ voters to shun the far right. Indeed, Ciotti thanked Retailleau for his stance and hailed him as a “man of character” for not endorsing Estrosi. FRIENDS TO RIVALS Ciotti hails from Les Républicains and led the party from 2022 to 2024, before veering to the far right. He was ousted from the party leadership in a farcical coup after he proposed cooperating with Le Pen’s far right amid the snap parliamentary election of 2024. He was ultimately toppled after locking himself in party headquarters, forcing another senior party official to go and find a spare key. He now heads a micro-party, the Union of the Right for the Republic, and has secured National Rally backing on the riviera. The rivalry with Estrosi didn’t start with this campaign. Estrosi hired Ciotti as a parliamentary assistant after being elected to the French lower house in 1988, and the pair went on to work in tandem until falling out in 2017, shortly after Macron’s first election win. Estrosi quickly moved toward supporting the centrist president; while Ciotti remained a staunch opponent. Estrosi, a former professional motorcycle racer, trailed Ciotti by about 15,000 votes in the first round. He is betting that he could be bailed out by the 25,000 voters who backed left-wing candidates in the first round, as well as on the roughly 100,000 who abstained, disproportionately living in poorer neighborhoods. PRESSING THE FLESH Little wonder then that Estrosi on Wednesday afternoon was walking round a working-class district near the central train station, shaking hands and taking selfies, many with residents of North African descent despite having always called for a crackdown on immigration. The next day, he stood alongside left-leaning city councillors, pledging to speed up the city’s green transition and warning of the perils of the far right. “We can’t afford not to commit ourselves to blocking the path of what could spell disaster for a city like ours,” he said in reference to a Ciotti win. There’s certainly a good measure of opportunism here, because based on past remarks and despite recent alliances, Estrosi is hardly a moderate. Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux, the Green candidate, highlighted his track record at a press conference on Thursday: He opposed same-sex marriage — describing it as a “distraction worthy of a Las Vegas show” in 2012 — warned in 2015 of an “Islamist fifth column” in France, and claimed in 2023 that images from Gaza of mothers carrying dead infants were staged. Chesnel-Le Roux made the runoff by garnering more than 10 percent of the vote. While left-wing candidates typically withdraw to block the far right in cases where they are unable to win — as happened in nearby Marseille — she has refused to do so. For her, Estrosi and Ciotti are two sides of the same coin, and she worries that pulling out would leave the city without any opposition. On her campaign poster, she calls for a rejection of both camps with a stark “ni l’un, ni l’autre” — neither one nor the other. It is illustrated with fingers pointing at the two other candidates’ posters. “The people of Nice know that it was Estrosi who launched Ciotti,” she said. “If we pull out, who becomes the opposition? … Members of Estrosi’s group will be strongly tempted to join Ciotti.” Campaign posters in Nice. | Victor Goury-Laffont/POLITICO WHICH MODEL FOR THE RIGHT? That view is echoed by Jean-Marc Governatori, the Green candidate in the last municipal election who is now backing Ciotti after being promised a role in the future local administration. “Ninety percent of those elected on Estrosi’s list will come over to our side,” he said at a café near City Hall. “Estrosi has a tremendous capacity to rally people against him.” That may be what pushed Les Républicains’ Retailleau to ditch the current mayor in the campaign’s final stretch. A close ally, who was granted anonymity to discuss party business, said younger officials had been complaining for weeks about “the direction” of Estrosi’s campaign due to its increased overtures to the left. A Ciotti victory would force not only conservatives but also the far right to clarify their path — particularly on core economic policy. Ciotti is a fiscal hawk who wants mass privatizations and admires Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding, libertarian President Javier Milei. His strategy is to win over wealthy and business voters who once backed the traditional right. Le Pen, by contrast, describes herself as being “neither left nor right,” defends parts of the welfare state and targets less affluent voters in deindustrialized regions. But her legal troubles could bar her from running in 2027. If 30-year-old Bardella replaces her — an increasingly likely scenario — he may have to choose between those two models, and decide where the probable next mayor from Nice fits in his plans for France. Sarah Paillou contributed to this report.

PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is on track to win reelection as mayor of Le Havre, according to polling shared exclusively with POLITICO. The survey from Cluster 17 showed Philippe, who is running for French president next year, netting 47 percent of the vote in the runoff on Sunday. His main challenger from the Communist Party, Jean-Paul Lecoq, scored 39 percent in the poll. The far-right National Rally’s Franck Keller came in third with 14 percent. Should those numbers hold in the vote, it will be a major sigh of relief for Philippe. A poll released before the first round of the election last Sunday showed Philippe in danger of losing to Lecoq, which would have imperiled his presidential aspirations. Philippe is widely viewed as the centrist candidate with the best chance of beating the far right in the race for the Elysée. Philippe had already managed to temper predictions of doom and gloom by turning in a strong performance in the first round, beating Lecoq by nearly 10 points. Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He posts at @Mij_Europe. France’s municipal elections were never meant to be a dress rehearsal for its next presidential race. And yet, the first round of voting on March 15 was exactly that, offering a revealing and deeply paradoxical snapshot of a politically fractured country. At first glance, the results seemed to confirm the prevailing narrative: That Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) remains the dominant force in French politics, with national opinion polls giving the party a commanding 19-point lead ahead of the 2027 presidential elections. But the reality beneath these headlines is more complicated — and perhaps more fragile. First, the RN’s first-round performance was uneven at best. It did make some advances: It remains competitive in Marseille, leads in Toulon, and most importantly is poised to capture Nice, France’s fifth-largest city, in the second round this coming Sunday. However, analysts have pointed out that the city’s mayoral candidate Eric Ciotti — a former president of the center-right Republicans — only recently joined the RN and made a point of distancing himself from the far-right party throughout his campaign. Furthermore, these gains fell short of both the party’s and pollsters’ expectations. In fact, in most of France’s major urban centers like Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, the RN scored less than 8 percent. The party’s struggles in these big cities suggest that for all its national appeal, it still encounters resistance when voters are asked to entrust it with an actual mandate to govern. French voters may flirt with the far right in theory, but in practice many remain cautious. The most surprising development, meanwhile, was the performance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed movement, which exceeded expectations across the country. The party captured Saint-Denis, is likely to win Roubaix, and gave a strong performance in cities like Toulouse and Lille. It appears this surge was driven, at least in part, by geopolitical developments — specifically the war in Iran. Based on impressions on the ground, heightened anti-war sentiment seems to have mobilized both the Muslim and young hard-left voters who form the party’s base. The implications of this are significant: Many had written Mélenchon off after a series of scandals and a dip in national polling. But these successes suggest he may yet play an important role in shaping the presidential elections — again — making it difficult for a more moderate left candidate to emerge and possibly even reaching the final run-off alongside the far right. Meanwhile, France’s traditional parties — the center-left Socialists and center-right Republicans — continue to display an unexpected resilience at the local level, despite being nationally sidelined since 2017. Together they dominated a majority of towns, including many of the country’s largest cities, remaining deeply embedded in municipal politics. By contrast, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist movement remains conspicuously weak, having failed to establish a meaningful municipal base after nearly a decade in power. It’s an absence that helps explain the lack of a clear anti-incumbent wave, as voters had limited opportunities to express dissatisfaction with the government at the local ballot box given the relatively few centrist mayors they could unseat. Finally, amid this fragmented field, the one figure that stands out is former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Philippe’s strong showing in Le Havre — where he secured 43 percent of the vote in the first round — comfortably positions him for reelection. And out of the large pack of candidates trailing behind the far right in the presidential polls, he now looks to be the strongest (though marginally) and most experienced contender. Philippe had previously said he would abandon his national ambitions if he lost the mayoral race, but a good win on Sunday could easily relaunch his flagging national campaign. The second round of municipal elections will, of course, be crucial. A strong showing by the RN — particularly if the party is able to capture Marseille and Toulon — could restore its momentum and reinforce its performance at the national level. But in such an uncertain environment, next year’s race is far from decided. And what the first round of municipal results really reveal isn’t so much a country marching in one direction as one pulled in several at once, searching — perhaps uneasily — for a new political equilibrium.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday castigated France’s mainstream political parties for working with “dangerous,” more radical ones after the first round of local elections. The comments, shared by government spokesperson Maud Bregeon after a Cabinet meeting, are Macron’s first since voters went to the polls Sunday in all of France’s approximately 35,000 municipalities. “Arrangements between parties should not lead to forgetting certain principles,” Macron said, according to Bregeon. While the far-right National Rally has yet to convince other more moderate right-wing parties to join forces, the Socialist Party teamed up with the more radical France Unbowed in several cities where the hard-left party performed surprisingly well — including Toulouse, home to European aerospace giant Airbus, and Clermont-Ferrand, where tire-maker Michelin is located. Those unions on the left came after the Socialists had vowed heading into the contest not to work with France Unbowed on the national level. But the party’s relatively weak performance in cities saw local politicians effectively ignore that decision locally to either keep control of certain municipalities or take them from the right, even if it means empowering France Unbowed ahead of next year’s presidential race. Les Républicains, the historic party of French conservatism, has not endorsed any of the several far-right candidates who made the runoff in southern cities such as Marseille or Toulon, but has not explicitly called on its voters to vote strategically against the far right, as it customarily did in the past. In Nice, where current mayor Christian Estrosi could lose to National Rally ally Eric Ciotti, Les Républicains President Bruno Retailleau said it was up to voters to pick their preferred candidate and refused to weigh in on the race — even though his party officially supports Estrosi. Nice, the unofficial capital of the French Riviera and the fifth most populous French city, would be the biggest win ever for the far right.

PARIS — Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon is emerging from this month’s municipal elections as France’s chief political disrupter, building momentum he hopes will turn him into the leading contender against the far right in next year’s presidential race. The nightmare scenario for France’s beleaguered center left, however, is that Mélenchon would make for a highly divisive presidential candidate, and polling suggests he could ultimately gift a win to the far-right National Rally in 2027. The 74-year-old former teacher took a highly abrasive, confrontational approach to the local elections — stoking controversy with his unapologetic response to the killing of a far-right activist, and later with comments that were condemned as antisemitic. But this pugnacious strategy — slammed by his critics as a “brutalization” of politics — seems to have paid off, with his France Unbowed party winning big in key target areas like working-class and immigrant communities in Sunday’s first round. Mélenchon has hailed his results as a “magnificent breakthrough.” France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris outright, and he looks well-placed to win mayoral contests in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in France’s fourth-largest city, Toulouse. DIVISIVE LEADER Mélenchon’s performance now looks set to have major consequences across France’s political landscape. He is anathema to France’s centrists, and his political rise only heightens the perception that the country’s leftist camp will be rudderless and riven by internal feuds, just as the country faces its most momentous election in years, with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from the far-right National Rally as the current favorites for the presidency. For now, it also looks highly improbable that such an inflammatory figure as Mélenchon can stop the far right if he qualifies for the second round of the presidential vote next year. While he describes French politics as an “us-against-them” battle on the extremes, and sees France Unbowed as the only party that can lead a “single front” against the far right, polling suggests the French electorate is extremely wary of him. If Mélenchon were to make it to a runoff in 2027, a poll in November suggested he would be smashed by Bardella. According to the survey by Odoxa, 74 percent would pick the National Rally leader for the Elysée. “It’s not at all certain that France Unbowed can widen its electorate to the [centrist] Macron-backing voters,” said Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard. French far-right Rassemblement National party’s President Jordan Bardella speaks after the first round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Beaucaire, south-eastern France on March 15, 2026. | Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images “Mélenchon is a great political machine that mobilizes the left-wing electorate … but he is also a machine that scares away more moderate voters,” he said. DISARRAY ON THE LEFT Not everyone agrees that France Unbowed’s results on Sunday were as emphatic as Mélenchon is making them out to be. The center-left Socialist Party and its allies are still on track to hold onto many more cities and towns, including Marseille and Montpellier. And the hard left’s combative messaging has not been successful everywhere. “There are towns where their results are quite disappointing,” said pollster Gallard, pointing to suburbs in Paris and Lyon. But even if the hard left’s victories turn out to be less impressive on closer inspection, they are still sending shockwaves through the rest of the left. The Socialist Party, which has been hoping for a comeback after a decade of center-right politics under Macron, is the first and most obvious of Mélenchon’s victims. The moderate left very publicly condemned France Unbowed when Mélenchon refused to distance himself from the ultra-left group that was involved in the death of far-right activist Quentin Deranque. Shock then turned to horror last month when Mélenchon was accused of antisemitism after mocking the pronunciation of Jewish names and playing up the Jewishness of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Marine Le Pen (L) and Jordan Bardella arrive at the Hotel Matignon to attend a meeting of party leaders on the conflict in Iran, hosted by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, in Paris on March 11, 2026. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images “He’s the Jean-Marie Le Pen of our times,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a Jewish politician from the center left who was targeted by Mélenchon. Glucksmann was referring to Marine Le Pen’s father, who founded the National Front and downplayed the Holocaust. In the wake of Sunday’s results, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure tried to hold the line against France Unbowed, pledging there would be no “national alliance.” But within hours the Socialists were striking deals at the local level, including in France’s third-largest city, Lyon.  “We’ll get attacked all week,” warned Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a Socialist former lawmaker, who slammed the “lack of clarity” over the party’s position. “What we’ll win now, we’ll lose in the presidential election because we won’t be credible,” he said. In another sign of division, the Socialists and the Greens have also been at each other’s throats over whether to team up with France Unbowed. GAMING THE TWO-ROUND ELECTION For Mélenchon, such divisions are good news. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party, during a press conference in Lyon. France on March 10, 2026. | Albin Bonnard/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images After blowing up France’s traditional parties, President Emmanuel Macron has left a fragmented political landscape ahead of the 2027 presidential election, along with a weakened centrist coalition. With the French president unable to run for a third consecutive term, there’s a surplus of presidential hopefuls on the starting line. This could lower the threshold of votes needed to qualify for the runoff vote against the far right. Candidates such as Mélenchon, who have a dedicated and loyal voter base, may be able to pull past more consensual candidates who could cancel each other out. “That’s his strategy,” said a Socialist Party adviser who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss party politics. “We are capable of taking a dive in elections, but France Unbowed never takes a dive, they never go under 10 percent” in national elections, the adviser said. “But there isn’t a scenario in which he wins in a runoff vote against Bardella.” The difficulty for the moderate left is compounded by the fact that Mélenchon is one of the most charismatic politicians on the left. He has even drawn the reluctant admiration of Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, who called him “the most cultured” politician around. But what’s true of the left is also to some extent true of the conservatives and the center right, which are enmeshed in internal squabbling to see who can assume Macron’s mantle. “What are the political offers on the table and who is there to embody them?” asked a close ally of the French president. “I can see what the extremes are offering, but in between, it’s really not clear,” he said. That’s a gap Mélenchon is trying to exploit.

PARIS — The far-right National Rally had reason to hope this month’s French municipal elections would show it now has an unstoppable momentum before the presidential race in 2027. After all, the party has been on a steady upward trajectory during this election cycle, with polls showing Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, as the frontrunner ahead of next year’s campaign. But while its candidates did very well in Sunday’s first round, particularly in important southern cities such as Marseille and Toulon, it looks like Marine Le Pen’s troops are still falling short of the decisive breakthrough they seek. The party’s heavyweights are avoiding any triumphalism after the first-round results, knowing that they now face their perennial stumbling block: A second round in which numerous other parties can club together to keep it out of power. This has always been the National Rally’s political vulnerability — most conspicuously for Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie in presidential contests — and it is not clear that it has shattered that glass ceiling. In cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes, where its candidates performed strongly on Sunday, they could find themselves in trouble in the second round. The National Rally’s party leaders are appealing to other right-wing candidates to join them to try to beat left-leaning opponents in the second round on March 22. But for now, the complex dynamic of ad hoc alliances that shape local races seems more likely to work against them once again. “We have 60 cities where we came out first, [where] we think it’s within reach,” National Rally Vice-President Sébastien Chenu said on RTL radio on Monday. “Then there are cities … where we are open to alliances with rival lists” from the right, he added. The problem for the party is that nobody is rushing to take this olive branch. By contrast, other parties are locked in talks about whether and how to join forces against the far right — even if that conversation is proving trickier than in past cycles due to deep divisions between left-wing parties and uncertainty about voter intentions. SUN BELT IN FOCUS Marseille, France’s second-biggest city, perfectly illustrates both the National Rally’s advances and its dilemma. National Rally candidate Franck Allisio (35 percent) almost tied with incumbent left-wing Mayor Benoît Payan (36.7 percent) in the first round. That’s more than 15 percentage points higher than the National Rally’s previous score in the 2020 local election.   Still, Allisio now faces an uphill battle to beat the current mayor, with the two main centrist and conservative forces discussing the best strategy to beat him shortly after polls closed.  The conservative candidate, who came third, will not be pulling out — reducing the prospect of her votes going to Allisio. The party has been on a steady upward trajectory during this election cycle, with polls showing Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, as the frontrunner ahead of next year’s campaign. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images In Nîmes, another key target in the National Rally’s sun belt, the calculus is different. Its candidate, the prominent politician Julien Sanchez, came first but will now face one opponent from the center right and one from the center left, who are better placed because they are expected to pick up the votes of candidates who won’t be represented in the second round.  In Toulon, National Rally candidate Laure Lavalette, a personal friend of Le Pen, landed an impressive 42 percent of the vote on Sunday. However, it is predicted that she will struggle to attract more voters in the second round, putting her center-right rival in a strong position. Asked about this potential disappointment in a city that the far right had been eyeing as a top prize, party heavyweight and MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy said on radio France Inter: “An election is never a done deal.” But he stressed that the National Rally now has a “strong presence in the runoffs across the whole country … that is a change because before the National Rally could be strong in some areas and a bit absent in others. Today, it is present almost everywhere.” The city of Nice, on the French Riviera, is the big prize most likely to land in the far right’s hands next Sunday, but political observers have been quick to note that candidate Eric Ciotti, if he wins, will have prevailed in very specific circumstances.   Ciotti is a local political baron and was president of Les Républicains from 2022 to 2024. He only joined forces with Le Pen’s National Rally after a dramatic political coup on the traditional center right. He in fact downplayed his alliance with the National Rally during the campaign, keeping party leaders Le Pen and Bardella at arm’s length. EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT During the campaign, the National Rally leadership was careful not to project unrealistic expectations, adopting a cautious tone even days ahead of the first round. Party figures all had a precedent in mind, mindful of the 2024 snap elections, another case of their traditional second-round Achilles heel. The far right had done well in the first round, but failed to deliver as many seats as they hoped after opponents teamed up against them ahead of the runoff. National Rally President Bardella picked a safe place to speak from on Sunday night — Beaucaire, a small city in the south of France that the party was all but guaranteed to win. He took the stand barely five minutes after polls closed to deliver a short, restrained speech, referencing the “serious, honest work” of outgoing National Rally mayors.  “These results reveal an expectation that we know is immense,” he said.  Still, Jean-Yves Dormagen, a political scientist and head of polling institute Cluster17, said the National Rally shouldn’t be underestimated in this election. “In the cities where it was competing, it is scoring very high. Now the question of whether they will win is another question, it depends on how voters add up [in the runoffs].” He stressed that results in large cities, closely watched by the media, tend to overshadow what’s happening in smaller constituencies all over the country. “None of this really gives us much of a clue about what 2027 will be like.”