Municipal 2026: poll after poll, ever stronger abstention | EUROtoday

From election to election, the statement stays the identical. Abstention is inexorably gaining floor in France. Despite a rise in participation within the first spherical of the municipal elections, Sunday March 15, after a 2020 election marked by the Covid-19 well being disaster, the figures are down in comparison with the 2014 municipal elections.

Participation on Sunday was 57.17%, the second lowest price underneath the V^e Republic after the 2020 election (44.66%), in response to full information from the Ministry of the Interior.

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Participation in 2026 is greater than 15 factors under the typical participation in a municipal election between 1959 and 2014 (72.35%). It is down considerably in comparison with the 2014 elections (63.55%, -6 factors).

The fall is especially spectacular in cities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, the place it goes from 75% to 64% (-11). The decline diminishes when the scale of municipalities will increase.

The battle in Iran overshadowed the marketing campaign

In cities with greater than 100,000 inhabitants, the citizens was much more mobilized than in 2014 (+0.6 factors). In Paris, abstention elevated from 42.8% in 2014 to 41.1%. In Lyon, this went from 42% in 2014 to 35.5%. In Toulouse, it went from 47.8% in 2014 to 43.6%.

“Where the election seemed very contested, in cities which are strongly divided politically, where the left-right divide is very strong, participation was high. This shows that the issues matter and that when voters perceive that they are faced with important choices, they tend to mobilize”, analyzed Monday Jean-Yves Dormagen, professor of political science on the University of Montpellier, creator of a number of books on abstention and founding father of the polling institute Cluster17, on Franceinfo radio.

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The reform of the voting technique in small municipalities has additionally led to a major discount within the supply, with “two thirds of the municipalities representing a quarter of the voters where there is no[vait] only one list,” François Kraus, director of the Ifop political division, explained to AFP.

The media context also did not help voters to be interested in the election. The war in Iran broke out at the end of February, leading to little media coverage of the municipal campaign as it entered the home stretch.

The legitimacy of mayors in question

“This is one of the least publicized municipal campaigns under the V^e Republic. Very little was said about it. The campaign never really started. And at a time when we should have been at maximum electoral intensity, we mainly talked about the war in Iran and international issues,” underlined Jean-Yves Dormagen on Franceinfo.

Finally, poor registration, particularly among young people who move more than their elders, does not help to improve participation figures. “Half of young people are not in a position to vote where they live, if we include the small portion of unregistered young people who did not benefit from automatic registration at 18,” Jean-Yves Dormagen said during his hearing by the National Assembly’s commission of inquiry in May 2025.

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A problem which has very concrete consequences on the legitimacy of mayors: in large cities, students only represent between 3% and 4% of voters, while they constitute around a quarter of the inhabitants, according to the specialist, who underlines that “many mayors are elected by lower than one in ten inhabitants”.

The municipal elections, nonetheless, are a part of a deeper development. Participation within the presidential election was 79.5% in 2012, 77.8% in 2017 and 73.7% in 2022. As for participation within the legislative elections, it was 57.2% in 2012, 48.7% in 2017 and 47.5% in 2022. The dissolution of 2024 was, nonetheless, marked by a resurgence in participation with a price of 66.7% within the early legislative elections. A democratic upsurge which was not confirmed on Sunday night.