Emmanuel Macron is losing his urban grip

There were two obvious losers in France’s runoff round of local elections, held after a three-month delay caused by the Covid-19 epidemic. One was democracy. Only about 40% of eligible voters bothered to turn up, a record low. The other was President Emmanuel Macron, whose core urban fan base went Green.
The eco-friendly EELV party snatched control of several big cities, from Lyon to Bordeaux, while Paris remained in the hands of its car-bashing Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo. Macron’s party, La Republique En Marche!, flopped. It wasn’t so much a green wave as a green “tsunami.”
The low turnout, and Macron’s performance, partly reflected the surreal train-wreck of the election campaign itself. Macron’s original candidate for the Paris mayoralty threw in the towel in February after a tape surfaced online, and his replacement never looked convincing. The Covid-19 epidemic struck France a month later, completely overshadowing the first round of voting — which, in hindsight, really shouldn’t have gone ahead — and delaying the second round for three months. No wonder so many people avoided the voting booths and opted for post-lockdown sunbathing.
And yet, the results fit longer-term trends in French society. The environment has climbed up the list of voter issues in recent years, reaching second place behind security in France’s 120 biggest cities, according to a 2019 poll. The coronavirus has kept it there: Some 56% of French people polled in June said they wanted an economic model in France that protects natural resources, rather than one focussed just on job creation. The figure was 50% in December.
There’s a deglobalisation element to this, as the French favour more onshoring of industry and protectionism as a response to Covid-19. But urban citizens are especially fed up with the legacy of car-dominated public works and highways. In Lyon, the Greens campaigned to make the city more bike-and-bus-friendly, while center-right rivals talked up extravagant projects such as ring-road extensions.
While Macron is clearly greener than his chief rival for the presidency, the far-right Marine Le Pen, he has failed to keep up with the aspirational identity politics of his city-dwelling base. The political neophytes that stuff Macron’s party have struggled to establish themselves locally, while the man himself is less popular than he used to be. A cycle of protests and policy U-turns over everything from fuel tax to pension reforms has eroded support even among his core white-collar backers (the “bourgeois bloc”).
In the 2017 presidential election, the 42-year-old former banker and one-time Socialist attracted 90% of the vote in Paris. In last year’s European elections, his party came first in the capital, with 33% of the vote. This time around, Macron’s candidate came in third, behind Hidalgo and the center-right Republicans.

—Bloomberg