Perhaps it is there, rue des Amandiers (20e district), that the verdict was the most cruel for Anne Hidalgo. Sunday evening April 10, in this school transformed into a polling station, 606 “Jean-Luc Mélenchon” ballots were counted, or 60.5% of the votes. The pile of “Anne Hidalgo”, it did not rise very high. Five small papers only. Less than 0.5% of the vote. A starving score for the mayor of Paris. Humiliating, even, in a district won over to the socialists for decades. “It’s a popular district, hot as embers, which has many social housing units and has mobilized several times over conflicts, explains Danielle Simonnet, elected La France insoumise (LFI) in the district. We are very proud of the historic score of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in these districts, as in a large part of Paris. »
Four or five ballots here, 10 there, 40 or 50 elsewhere. Rarely more. Even in the neighborhood offices that usually supported her, Anne Hidalgo recorded a catastrophic result in the first round of the presidential election, which can only complicate her full-time return to City Hall.
In all of Paris, only 22,935 voters remained loyal to him. Compare to the 225,000 votes she received in 2020, when she was re-elected as mayor. Almost ten times more! This time, she won only 2.18% of the votes cast in the capital. Barely more than its national score (1.75%). “It’s true, she didn’t benefit from any local bonus, admits Rémi Féraud, one of his faithful, who leads the elected socialists at the Council of Paris. Everything was swept away by the useful vote in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. »
Punctual unions between right and ecologists?
On the left as on the right, some hope to take advantage of this fiasco to influence the continuation of the mandate. Even before the first round, Anne Hidalgo’s allied ecologists had presented 10 “alert points” in terms of town planning, and urged the socialists to abandon the towers, to cap new buildings at 37 meters, to “strongly limit” the construction of offices and private housing, etc. “If we want to prevent Paris from swinging to the right in 2026, we have to act in terms of social justice and the climate, to present a solid balance sheet”, pleads Fatoumata Koné, the president of the environmental group at the Council of Paris. She intends to ask Anne Hidalgo for a quick meeting.
On the right, the defeated candidate is also expected at the turn. “During the campaign, everyone realized his mediocrity, his lack of work, attacks Aurélien Véron, one of the musketeers of the Parisian right. With Rachida Dati, we are not going to let go. » His colleague David Alphand is just as offensive: “With a score of 2%, Mme Hidalgo has a legitimacy problem, he said. If the Parisians were satisfied with her action as mayor, she would have survived. There she collapses. »
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