ANALYSIS - French Choose Mayors In Ballot Marred By COVID-19 Lockdown, Greens Beat Macron's LREM

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2020) The first round of French municipal elections was marked by a historic level of abstention due to the coronavirus outbreak, with the right-wing National Rally holding its ground, the presidential majority doing worse than expected and the greens showing promising results, experts told Sputnik.

The French cast their ballots in the first round of a two-round vote on Sunday to chose new mayors. But the lockdown, announced on the eve of the voting - with the mandatory closure of all non-essential stores and businesses until April 15 - made many voters stay at home instead. Around 46 percent of the population took part in the polls, compared to 63.5 percent recorded in the first round of the previous local elections in 2014.

The obvious winners were the green parties, whose candidates scored well across France, including in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Lyon, Besancon and Grenoble, Paul Smith, an associate professor in French and Francophone Studies at the UK University of Nottingham, told Sputnik.

"The really important trend is the success of the greens. The ecology movement has really established itself as a principal power on the left ... Its success has been made on alliances that's made with lots of different left-wing parties in different places," Smith explained.

He added that ecologists showed "a very significant performance, which we saw already in the European elections, which have been the success of the ecology party EELV [Europe Ecology - The Greens] coalition in combination with socialists in some places, communists, in the other places - various left-wing parties," the expert said.

Smith went on to say that even in the cities traditionally run by right parties, ecologists showed good results.

"One result that really stands out is this trend within Lyon, where most of the opinion polls put Gerard Collomb (former interior minister and former mayor of Lyon) in the first place. But he came a very distant second to the ecologist list ... In Bordeaux as well, it's not just the Macron's list that haven't done well, it's some of the moderate right, of the Republicans, are in the second place behind the greens after the first round," Smith said.

Alain Policar, a political analyst at the Center for Political Research of the Paris-based Sciences Po university, echoed him, saying that breakthrough of the greens was remarkable.

"There is a deep feeling that if we need an alternative to [President Emmanuel] Macron- [National Rally leader Marine] Le Pen duel, it can only be around the ecologist project driven by the greens," the expert said.

PRESIDENTIAL PARTY NOT DOING WELL, LE PEN SECURES POSITIONS

The experts noted that the candidates of the presidential Le Republique En March (LREM) party showed rather modest results.

"If we check with some 'key' cities, like Paris, we see that the campaign of the majority, with Agnes Buzyn, former health minister, came third with no chances to win at all," Policar said.

"The results are very variable: it's the greens doing well, it's Macron and his party doing a little bit worse than we expected ... Over the last month they had revised their aspirations down quite radically and were hoping to maybe get 10,000 sets if they did well," Smith added.

Policar argued that this vote was a testimony to "dissatisfaction with the current power."

Without showing any new significant gains, the right-wing National Rally managed to secure its positions in the cities where the party is traditionally supported.

"For municipal election the National Front [Rally] has confirmed its positions. In the cities run by the National Front mayors they were re-elected ... It is a sort of rooting of the National Front on the municipal level. It is not a failure for them, but there hasn't been any breakthrough either. The key city in this regard is Perpignan, and there Louis Aliot, who is Marine Le Pen's partner, is leading and has all the chances to win," Policar explained.

"It looks like their vote in the local election has stabilized whereas they did well in 2014, they made some really significant gains, it doesn't really look like they've pushed on from there," Smith said.

Some 60 percent of the mayors have been elected in the first round of vote on March 15. The second round, set for March 22, was postponed by President Emmanuel Macron due to the ongoing outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, which has been contracted by more than 9,000 people and killed 244 in France alone.