after 10 years at the head of the city, Anne Hidalgo maintains the mystery about her intentions for 2026

It will officially be ten years on Friday that Anne Hidalgo has been mayor of Paris. We do not yet know if she will come back or hang up her gloves in the 2026 municipal elections, she will not reveal anything before the end of the Olympic Games.

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Anne Hidalgo at Paris City Hall, during a press conference, December 8, 2023. (AMAURY CORNU / HANS LUCAS / AFP)

The question haunts the corridors of city hall: “Anne Hidalgo, will she return there in 2026 or not?”. Parisian elected officials are in the dark, because Anne Hidalgo, who is celebrating ten years as mayor of Paris on Friday April 5, will say nothing about her intentions until the Olympic Games have passed. And he likes being at the center of questions. “I like”she laughs in private.

Anne Hidalgo blows hot and cold, she is very happy as mayor of Paris, proud of her record, but also capable of doing other things. “I really don’t know what she’s going to decide,” confides one of his lieutenants. Anne Hidalgo herself claims not to know. The theory of an elected Parisian environmentalist is as follows: “If the Olympics are a fiasco, she will stop, but if it goes well, she will tell herself that she is in a favorable situation.”

Far behind Rachida Dati in the polls

In the polls today, Anne Hidalgo is in any case far from being in a favorable situation. In an Ifop survey for Le Figaro, Anne Hidalgo is around 19%. At Ipsos for The Sunday Tribune, she is even at 13-14%, when her best enemy Rachida Dati is at 32, even 38%! Anne Hidalgo “do not look” the polls, but a little all the same since she remembers that “two years before the 2020 municipal elections, Benjamin Griveaux won”. As a result, Anne Hidalgo was re-elected, and largely in the last municipal elections. PS executives say that she does not believe “Never” the polls, to the point that 15 days before the 2022 presidential election “she was convinced of making 15%”. But this time, it ended at 1.75%.

These polls two years before the municipal elections are “obviously not good”admits a Parisian socialist, but other elected officials from his majority are reassured on the theme “c‘is very, very far from being played out’, because the left’s total remains high. The environmentalists are in fact either just in front of Anne Hidalgo, or just behind. A PS leader is more alarmist, “Anne Hidalgo is burnedhe said, If she persists in staying, she will make us lose Paris, she must let her succession be organized.” But Anne Hidalgo’s only subject today is “do your job” And “deliver the Olympics”.


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