2001 French municipal elections
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Municipal elections were held in France on 11 and 18 March 2001. These elections were marked by a setback for the left and a victory for the right one year before the 2002 presidential election. However, the capital, Paris and the second largest city, Lyon both switched to the left.
Following the second round, the right controlled 318 municipalities, the left 259.
The next elections were scheduled for 2007 but were rescheduled to 2008 to avoid interfering with the legislative and presidential elections of 2007.
Results in major cities
Municipal councillors of cities with 35,000+ population
Party/alliance | Seats | |
---|---|---|
PRG
|
9775 | |
DL
|
9722 | |
Miscellaneous right | 5873 | |
Miscellaneous left | 2518 | |
Miscellaneous | 649 | |
MNR | 157 | |
Les Verts | 123 | |
FN
|
106 | |
Ecologists | 48 | |
Far-left | 41 | |
Regionalists | 13 |
Results by party
Left (PS, PCF, Greens)
Communists
The number of cities of over 30,000 inhabitants held by the communists shrank from 37 to 27 following the 2001 municipal elections.
The gain of Sevran and Arles (from the Socialist Party) were not enough to reverse the progressive collapse of "municipal Communism", a tendency already started since the 1983 election (with the loss of Nîmes, Sète, Reims, Levallois-Perret, Antony, or Sèvres) and confirmed in 1989 with the loss of Amiens.
Socialists
The
The Greens
The Greens won Saumur, their first city of over 30,000 inhabitants, with over 50% of the votes in the first round.[1] The Greens began to emerge as the second most important party in the "plural left" after the Socialist Party, to the disadvantage of the Communists. In cities where they ran against socialist and communist lists, the Greens scored remarkable successes, such as in Grenoble (20%), Lille (15,5%), Besançon (16,1%), and in some Parisian arrondissements where they scored close to 20% in the first round of voting.[2]
The support of the PS by the Greens in the second round contributed to the victory of the left in Paris and Lyon.
Far-left (LO, LCR)
Workers' Struggle
Revolutionary Communist League
Revolutionary Communist League ran or "supported" (according to their terms) 91 lists, common with various coalition partners. It obtained 4.52%, or 93,182 votes. By the first round, these lists obtained 26 elected officials. Several lists then amalgamated with lists of the plural left, including of the MDC.
Right (RPR, UDF, DL)
Despite the losses in Lyon and Paris, the parliamentary right made important gains: it gained forty municipalities of more than 15,000 inhabitants in addition to those it already controlled, and gains from the left several towns of 30,000 inhabitants, including:
- Strasbourg: victory of the list of Fabienne Keller (UDF) (with 50.85% of the votes) with over Catherine Trautmann, incumbent
- Rouen: Pierre Albertini (UDF) won with 51.25% of the voices, against the outgoing mayor Yvon Robert (who won in 1995).
- Aix-en-Provence: Maryse Joissains-Masini (DVD) won with 50.60% of the voices against 49.40% for Jean-François Picheral (PS), mayor since 1989
- Nîmes: the Communist mayor Alain Clary (elected in 1995 in a four-way runoff) obtained only 44.33% of the votes, which elected Jean-Paul Fournier (RPR) with 55.66% of the voices).
- Quimper: Alain Gerard (RPR) won the city (with 52.13% of the votes), from the Socialist Jean-Claude Joseph (47.87%) after the socialist incumbent decided not to run for re-election.[3]
- Blois: Nicolas Perruchot (UDF) defeated the Minister for National Education Jack Lang by 37 votes(45.31% of the votes against 45.09%) in spite of the presence of the candidate of the FN.
The right held to the cities of Toulouse, Marseille, and Nice, with the victory of the lists led by Philippe Douste-Blazy in the first (55% of the votes), by Jean-Claude Gaudin in the second (48.5% of the votes) and by Jacques Peyrat in the third (44.48% of the votes).
Far-right (FN, MNR)
In 1995, the candidates of the FN had carried the towns of
The strong presence of both MNR and FN lists in numerous cities caused the failure of many far-right candidates to reach the runoff, as many FN candidates had done in 1995.