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fter two terms under Bertrand Delanoë and two more with Anne Hidalgo, Emmanuel Grégoire opens a new chapter in the relationship between Paris and the left, securing an absolute majority in the second round of France's municipal elections on Sunday, March 22.
This might seem incongruous, as the city is one of the wealthiest in France (80% of Paris polling stations are among the 10% most affluent in the country). Yet, the fact remains. If you add the votes won by Sophia Chikirou [La France Insoumise, LFI, radical left], the "left bloc" even reached an unprecedented level: 60%. As the outgoing administration's record was often mocked, this result may come as a surprise. It calls for a threefold analysis: social, territorial and democratic.
In concrete terms, Paris rejected a kind of Trumpian drift. In this election, the Parisian right (with the exception of Pierre-Yves Bournazel of the center-right Horizons) succumbed to the reactionary logic that dominates national and global debates. The right paid a heavy price for this moral surrender, which has steadily distanced large sections of Les Républicains [LR, right-wing] from core republican values. Some of its voters shifted to Grégoire, and [LR candidate] Rachida Dati recorded a historically low result for the right in Paris.
