How French public sentiment is shifting a year before the presidential election

18.03.2026, 20:09 eurointegration.com.ua

Last weekend, the first round of the municipal elections took place in France. It did not pick a president, but it exposed the country that will choose one next year.

The local elections highlighted the rapid marginalisation of the presidential camp. Meanwhile, the far-right improved its results, though not as much as many had expected.

Read more to understand what changes in voter sentiment these elections revealed and what they mean for the upcoming presidential race in the article by French journalist Charlotte Guillou-Clerc: Rehearsal for Macron's replacement: what the local elections reveal about sentiment in France.

The first takeaway from the recent vote is voter fatigue.

Official participation reached just 57.1%, the second-lowest first-round municipal turnout of the Fifth Republic after the Covid-disrupted vote of 2020.

The age divide makes the warning sharper.

An Ifop survey conducted in early February, before the vote, estimated that only 39% of 18-24-year-olds and 46% of 25-34-year-olds were certain to vote, against 72% of voters aged 65 and over.

The results in Paris are particularly telling. Paris is not the whole country, but it it shows many of the same political tensions.

It offers a simple picture of French politics before 2027: a left that leads without being fully united, a right that remains competitive only through regrouping, and a centre that barely survives.

The central question is no longer whether the National Rally can score well. It can.

The real question is whether the French right can still exist outside its gravitational pull.

At the same time, the National Rally’s municipal picture remains uneven.

In Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, National Rally candidates all stayed below 8%.

The second takeaway from the recent elections is that the political center no longer structures the political landscape.

Édouard Philippe, Former Prime Minister and the most likely presidential candidate from the presidential camp, may survive. Macronism, as a political organising centre, does not.

Philippe did what he needed to do in Le Havre, finishing first with 43.76% and preserving his national credibility after tying his local fate to his presidential ambitions.

Meanwhile, the left is gaining more and more voters each elections.

Its problem is leadership. And that is a major issue in the context of a presidential election.

These elections also remind us of an older rule of French local politics: roots matter. In municipal contests, party labels are only part of the story. Voters also look for familiarity, local knowledge and proof that a candidate genuinely belongs to the place they want to govern.

That helps explain why Édouard Philippe’s anchoring in Le Havre strengthens his results, why the National Rally remains weaker in cities where its candidates lack local standing, and why well-known names can still be rejected if they appear parachuted in.

If there is a winner of the first round, it is not one single camp.

The left remains the best placed in many major cities, from Paris to Nantes and Strasbourg, even if it is still divided over who should lead it.

On the right, the National Rally has not swept the country, but it is continuing to pull the wider right into its orbit, most clearly in places like Nice.

The clearest loser is the centre.