After 25 years of socialist rule, where does Paris go now?

Paris has been a socialist city for 25 years, but this year’s election is the most uncertain in decades. Earlier polls put Socialist Party candidate Emmanuel Gregoire ahead of the conservative challenger Rachida Dati in the race to take over from Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who’s led the French capital for three terms. But beneath the apparent stability of Parisian politics, the first round of voting last Sunday did reflect an important electoral shift in municipal elections widely seen as both a launching pad and a bellwether for France’s parties one year ahead of the presidential poll. For the first time ever, Parisians voted both a far-left and a far-right candidate through to the second round, reflecting a national trend that has seen an increasingly fragmented and polarized electorate strengthen the populist extremes at both ends of the spectrum, at the expense of France’s traditional parties. Of the five candidates who got through, only three will stand. The voting system in France’s municipal elections involves lists and proportional representation, meaning a lot tends to happen between the two rounds, with candidates making tactical alliances or dropping out altogether. After Gregoire beat Dati by 12 points last Sunday, she teamed up with the center-right candidate who came in fourth. Dati got a further boost this week when far-right candidate Sarah Knafo withdrew so as not to divide the right as they seek to oust the socialists from city hall. Knafo had made history by winning nearly 10% of the vote thanks to a remarkable campaign in which she used Zohran Mamdani-like tactics on social media to deliver to a very MAGA message on migrants and crime. Her party, Reconquête, which was only created in 2021, stands to the right of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. One study published ahead of the first round suggests that Knafo was helped by X’s algorithm, with her videos getting three times as many views as Dati’s. Still, the fact that a far-right candidate was even able get through to the second round in the liberal bastion that is Paris reflects a national trend that has seen a more polarized electorate increasingly abandon the traditional parties in favor of populist extremes, both far-left and far-right. In each of the two parliamentary elections since President Emmanuel Macron won his second term in 2022, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won a historic number of seats, setting a record in 2022 with 89 and then beating that in 2024 by taking 143, making it the largest single party in the National Assembly. Which makes the French capital something of an outlier: the two traditional moderate parties that president Macron saw off in 2017 to take the presidency are still the top choice for voters in the capital. Nationally, the electorate has tended to abandon them in favor of populist alternatives. In Paris, for now, the center appears to be holding. Although not Macron’s center. His failure to build a solid party after sweeping into the Elysee Palace is considered one of the reasons French politics have grown more unstable, more fragmented and more extreme. Polling earlier in the week leading up to Sunday’s vote showed a tightening race between Gregoire and Dati, but regardless of who wins, the two parties leading the race, who dominated French politics for decades, are unlikely to be able to reproduce their Parisian electoral success in the presidential race next year. What the first round showed very clearly is that, even in the city of light, populists both left and right are gaining ground and closing in.