HASt the start of February, an influential elected official from the National Rally (RN) spoke in these phrases: “The justice of the peace, it will be February 26 in the evening, when we know the lists for the municipal elections. What I’m being told seems crazy to me: we are absent from emblematic cities and the presence is very, very disparate across the territory. The mapping will be enlightening and will show that many MPs did not play the game.”
His prediction proved appropriate. The map of candidacies of the RN and the Union of Rights for the Republic (UDR, Eric Ciotti’s social gathering) within the municipal elections exhibits sturdy geographical disparities, with greater than a 3rd of the candidates concentrated within the two bastions of the intense proper, Hauts-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur.
If we keep on with municipalities with greater than 3,500 inhabitants, the RN will merely be absent in eight metropolitan departments. It solely provides one or two lists in 35 others: virtually triple in comparison with 2020, in accordance with the census carried out on the time by Radio France. The Parisian suburbs stay a no-man’s land – its presence within the peri-urban space permits the Ile-de-France RN to return, with 59 cities, to the 2014 stage, after a collapse six years in the past.
In Brittany and Pays de la Loire, different areas of relative electoral weak spot, the RN can be struggling to search out candidates. If it insisted on presenting credible heads of checklist within the metropolises, usually sending elected officers skilled within the media, the social gathering will nonetheless be absent from 1 / 4 of the 100 most populated cities within the nation, fairly often positioned in Ile-de-France or within the abroad territories.
Symbolic cities
It isn’t all the time for lack of voters, nor of activists: among the many 22 mainland prefectures the place the RN doesn’t current an inventory, allow us to cite Vesoul, Nevers or Gap, the place Jordan Bardella was within the lead throughout the 2024 European elections with virtually 30% of the votes. The World additionally famous a dozen sub-prefectures that are represented by a deputy from the far-right alliance within the National Assembly, however the place no RN checklist has been submitted: Soissons (Aisne), Verdun (Meuse), Compiègne (Oise) or Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire) are on this case. In Dordogne, the place three out of 4 deputies are Lepénists, we are going to solely discover two lists, and none in Périgueux.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2026/03/03/aux-elections-municipales-ces-nombreuses-zones-blanches-ou-le-rn-est-quasiment-absent_6669309_823448.html