French voters go to the polls on Sunday to elect mayors in Paris, Marseille and more than 1,500 other constituencies, in a test of the far right’s strength and the resilience of mainstream parties ahead of next year’s presidential election.
Heading nearly 35,000 municipalities – from major cities to villages with only a few dozen residents – mayors are France's most trusted elected officials.
Most mayors were elected outright in the first round on 15 March, having won more than 50 percent of the vote.
But there are runoffs on Sunday in around 1,590 constituences, including France's biggest cities.
Some 17 million people are eligible to vote.
Key battle grounds include Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
The local ballots are being closely watched to gauge the mood on the ground and potential party alliances before the election of a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron next year.
Voting started at 8 a.m. and ends between 6pm and 8 pm. Results will trickle in through the evening.
Voter turnout stood at 48.1 percent at 5pm in mainland France, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Polling has already closed in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. Data provided by the communes so far put turnout at around 72 percent, compared to 56 percent in first round.
What to watch in the deciding round of France's local elections
Key ballots
A close race is likely in Paris, where conservative former justice and culture minister Rachida Dati seeks to take control of the capital, which has been run by the left since 2001.
Her main rival is Emmanuel Gregoire – a former deputy of outgoing Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Another key ballot is in Marseille, the country's second-biggest city, where the second round pits the far-right National Rally (RN) against the incumbent Socialist mayor.
The RN's chances of winning Marseille took a hit when hard-left candidate Sebastien Delogu of France Unbowed (LFI) withdrew from the second round out of concern that splitting the left's vote could help the RN.
The first round brought mixed results for the party, which got re-elected in several cities but failed to make major wins beyond its southern and northern bastions.
In the French Riviera city of Nice, RN ally Eric Ciotti is facing off against incumbent mayor Christian Estrosi – a conservative backed by the centre.
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Shifting alliances
The thousands of separate municipal ballots are often focused on very local issues and their outcome does not forecast who will win in the April 2027 presidential election.
But they show trends, in popularity and in the type of alliances that can be struck in an increasingly fragmented landscape.
A key question is what impact the alliances – or lack of alliances – struck between the two rounds will have.
Local party negotiations since Sunday's first round have highlighted divisions on the left, with the Socialists striking deals with their hard-left arch-rivals from LFI in some cities, such as Lyon and Toulouse, but not in others such as Marseille or Lille.
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Overall turnout for the first round stood at 57 percent – the country's lowest in local polls bar the last edition in 2020 which was impacted by the Covid pandemic.
(with newswires)
