Local elections 2026: a campaign where the left was torn apart, "before finally agreeing"?

A public break over the municipal elections, a private reconciliation between the two rounds?

Officially, the Socialists have closed the door to "any possible agreement" with La France Insoumise to win or retain mayoralties on March 15th and 22nd. Against a backdrop of various controversies, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon's remarks on the pronunciation of the name of American criminal Jeffrey Epstein to those of Place Publique leader Raphaël Glucksmann, tensions have been running high between the Socialist Party and La France Insoumise. Therefore, there is no question of presenting an agreement across France at the starting line without taking too many risks. The lists for the municipal elections had already been submitted to the prefecture for the first round well before this clarification.

Ad hoc alliances to avoid a far-right victory? "It's something to consider."

The same atmosphere prevails among the Greens. We will not "form alliances as if nothing had happened" after the remarks of the founder of La France Insoumise (LFI), declared Marine Tondelier, the party's national secretary, this Tuesday evening during a meeting in Amiens.

In a nutshell, this sums up the strategy of the Socialists and the Greens. There's no question of breaking ties with La France Insoumise where a united left in the second round could win.

It must be said that the Green leader's statement is anything but rhetorical. In several major cities where the left is running a divided campaign, both the Socialists and the Greens will need to reach an agreement between the first and second rounds of the municipal elections if they hope to win. This is the case, for example, in Lyon, where the outgoing Green mayor, Grégory Doucet, has little chance of returning to the mayor's office without an agreement with MP Anaïs Belouassa-Cherifi. The Socialist mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, should also try to merge with the list of the La France Insoumise candidate, Sébastien Delogu, if he wants any chance of retaining the mayoralty. In Toulouse, a left-wing victory to unseat the incumbent, Jean-Luc Moudenc, who has remained close to the right, seems very uncertain if the Socialists and La France Insoumise do not also sit down together to discuss the matter. Result: potential alliances between the Socialist Party and the Greens will indeed take place between the two rounds of voting. "In an ideal world, the La France Insoumise party would have to be below 10% (the threshold to qualify for the second round - editor's note) and we wouldn't need to make agreements with them. Besides, we're not going to lose cities simply because Jean-Luc Mélenchon is talking nonsense. Our goal is still to reach an agreement in the end," a Socialist official acknowledged. The remnants of the New Popular Front. This justifies at least thirty agreements, according to... href="https://rmc.bfmtv.com/actualites/politique/info-rmc-muncipales-lfi-et-socialistes-feront-bien-liste-commune-dans-quelques-villes_AV-202602240105.html" title="RMC NEWS. Municipal elections: LFI and Socialists will indeed form a joint list in about thirty cities" class="internal_link">RMC's count from the first round between the PS and LFI. The figure is very modest out of the roughly 35,000 municipalities, but it was nonetheless highlighted by the president of the Republicans (LR), Bruno Retailleau, who sees them as "agreements of shame," counting, in passing, "112 municipalities" involved. While some of these agreements take place in medium-sized cities like Chartres or Agen, which do not have a left-wing mayor, they often involve outgoing majorities that have worked together for six years. This is the case in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne), Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine), and Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne). Could Socialist or Green voters get lost in these subtleties and feel they are being subjected to a double standard? No, argues Green senator Thomas Dossus from Lyon, citing the case of the legislative elections following Emmanuel Macron's surprise dissolution of parliament in June 2024.

"Technical merger" and "anti-fascist front"

Olivier Faure, who puts it differently, also refuses to exclude the unbowed voters because of disagreements with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The First Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) refused, in the pages of Le Parisien this Monday, to cast aspersions on the La France Insoumise (LFI) electorate "who sincerely followed LFI and do not feel co-responsible for the excesses of its leader."

Attracting LFI voters is important, yes, but while also managing not to alienate the more centrist electorate that the Socialists or Greens may need to ultimately win.

Example in Paris: the Socialist candidate Emmanuel Grégoire will have to win over both those who voted for the left-wing candidate Sophia Chikirou and those who managed to attract the more moderate voters of the Horizons-Renaissance candidate Pierre-Yves Bournazel.

What if Jean-Luc Mélenchon held the solution? At a rally in Marseille on Saturday, the founder of La France Insoumise (LFI) advocated for a "technical merger" in the second round between the LFI list and Benoît Payan's list. The message could also apply to other cities.

This type of merger, without a programmatic agreement, would not necessarily lead to joint municipal governance in the event of victory, but would allow for "an anti-fascist front," argued LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on France 3.

Among the Greens, the idea seems to be gaining traction. "Discussions will never be closed if certain principles are respected by the candidates with whom we ally, such as saying no to violence in politics," assures Green Senator Thomas Dossus. While agreements have indeed been reached in several major cities, it will still be necessary to make the most ardent critics of La France Insoumise swallow the pill. Any rapprochement with LFI would be a "compromise," causing a "lasting loss" of voters in the run-up to the presidential election, MP and former head of state François Hollande has repeatedly argued. Marine Tondelier's response: "We haven't mistaken which election is running. There are those preparing for national elections, those with a party strategy of running independently, to gauge their support and recruit. But the municipal elections are not a warm-up for 2027." So, the opponents of La France Insoumise have been warned.