Despite achieving historic scores and taking control of over 60 municipalities in the French local elections, the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) will be disappointed by its failure to make a breakthrough in the larger towns and cities. The headlines coming out of France after the second round of elections on March 22 tell of the resilience of the mainstream centre left and centre right, whose candidates held on to every major city hall in the country.
The two parties that dominate France’s political extremes – the far-right RN, led by Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) – made some gains in smaller towns. But they failed to capture a single one of the large cities.
This matters because France goes to the polls again in 2027 to elect its next president. The local elections were widely seen as a dress rehearsal – and the results expose the limits of both parties’ strategies. For the RN, the failure to break through in cities such as Marseille and Toulon — combined with the refusal of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) to enter into alliances with RN candidates — shows that, for the far right, the path to the Élysée Palace remains highly complicated.
