In the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, Anne Hidalgo recorded the Socialist Party’s worst score in this election, obtaining 1.7% of the vote. In her city, where she was comfortably re-elected two years ago, the mayor of Paris did little better with just over 2% of the vote. Admittedly, these are two different elections and the issues of national political life are not the same as those of the municipal life of the capital. However, it is difficult to imagine that this episode will have no impact on the rest of his term of office.
At the mention of this poor score, his opponents are jubilant. Thus, Rachida Dati, mayor of the 7th arrondissement and leader of the right at the Council of Paris: “She now knows what the Parisians think of her. This is a sanction vote. I consider that Madame Hidalgo will not be able to pursue her destructuring development projects in Paris“.
On the strength of the result of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came first in seven arrondissements on Sunday, Danielle Simonnet, who sits as the only rebellious in the group of non-registered members of the Council, also intends to put pressure on the mayor of Paris: “I think she’s going to have an extremely complicated end to her mandate, it’s a severe disavowal. She pays for her policy, which is not up to the ecological level and which has constantly privatized a certain number of public services“.
Victim of the useful vote?
“Don’t mix up deadlines“, pleads for his part Rémi Féraud, leader of the Parisian socialists. For him, a good part of the voters who chose Anne Hidalgo in the municipal elections of 2020 turned away from her this time in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon on behalf of of the useful vote, so that a left-wing candidate is a finalist in this presidential election.
For the political scientist Olivier Rouquan, the electoral legitimacy of the socialist mayor does not arise: “She obviously has to complete the term for which she was elected“. The researcher from Cersa (center for studies and research in administrative and political sciences) still considers her weakened by her failure in the presidential election: “The media, public opinion, will constantly remind him of this. She will have to fight against it. And we see more and more representative democracy being confronted with the disruptive logic of democracy of opinion. In this context, this could disrupt the end of his mandate“.