France 2026 Municipal Elections, the Paris Mayoral Race, and Macron's New Aircraft Carrier
France's second-round municipal elections are underway, with the Paris mayoralty hanging in the balance between Dati and Grégoire, while Macron unveils the €10 billion France Libre aircraft carrier
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This week
🗳️Second round of municipal elections takes place today
🤝Dati reliant on far-right vs socialist Grégoire in Paris
⚓Macron unveils “France Libre” aircraft carrier
🗳️Second round of municipal elections takes place today
Today is going to be a very interesting and important day for the French Republic, as the final 943 seats of the 3,290 municipal elections are decided by the French public.
The major French cities, Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, and others, are all voting for their political leadership and deciding on who will be making the decisions for the next six years.
Not only that, but in a city like Paris, the mayoralty has often been seen as a springboard to Presidential elections, a reputation that has been slightly undermined by the electoral wins of François Hollande and then Emmanuel Macron.
The big question is how exactly the results of the first round will be built upon, with the number of leading candidates in each election being from the following blocks:
Far left - 1
Radical Left - 3
Left - 816
Diverse - 545
Centre - 582
Right - 1268
Far-right - 75
And in many of these races, we’ve seen parties scrambling to make alliances to lock in a victory, block the far-right, or, in some cases, block the far-left, with the Parti Socialiste having found itself fighting with the fact that it may not win without the far-left La France Insoumise
On the right, we’ve seen a similar situation, with Rachida Dati, the former-now-current-but-still-former-Républicaine-but-really-a-macronist-but-not-really candidate for the Paris Mayoralty having found herself dependent on far-right vote share.
🤝Dati reliant on far-right vs socialist Grégoire in Paris
So, what is going on in Paris?
As you can see below, Dati has a slightly complex situation ahead of her today, having spent the last week attempting to find the votes to overtake the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire.
Trailing the leader by a wide margin, Rachida Dati is currently at risk of losing to the protégé of her former rival, Anne Hidalgo, and seeing the mayoralty slipping through her fingers yet again.
But, there are two key scenarios right now that could change the direction of travel for Paris, with both scenarios focusing on a far-left vote concentrating around Chikirou and La France Insoumise:
Scenario 1 - Centre + Right + Far-right bloc
In this Scenario, as highlighted above in “Potential 2nd rd 1”, the entirety of the Macronist vote that Bournazel (Horizons) had won transfers to Dati in an attempt to support a Macron-adjacent candidate at all costs.
Dati would benefit from Sarah Knafo’s entire vote share, with the far-right candidate mobilising her supporter base to vote exclusively to “fight the left” and ensure that there is a return to right-wing control in the French capital, bringing Dati’s total vote share up to 47%
Having excluded any form of alliance with the far-left, Emmanuel Grégoire would struggle to secure further votes to advance his electoral chances, would move from first place to a distant second, and would find himself in the opposition.
Scenario 2 - Centre splits, far-right backs Dati
In this Scenario, as highlighted above in “Potential 2nd rd 2”, Bournazel’s vote share would split in half, with the more right-leaning (Horizons) moving to Dati, and the social liberals (Renaissance/EPR) moving to Grégoire
This split would result from the doctrine of refusing to work with the far-right or the far-left, creating a preference for supporting the centre-left socialist candidate, who refused to work with LFI, as opposed to Dati, who is dependent on Reconquête!
Dati would still benefit from the far-right vote, but would lose a significant chunk of Bournazel’s vote and would struggle to overtake him
This would push Grégoire ahead with a slight majority, but without an overwhelming majority, he would find himself dependent on working with Chikirou’s faction on Parisian legislative work
Now, there will be several major future considerations here as well, with leaders Gabriel Attal (Renaissance) and Edouard Philippe (Horizons) having made it clear that they refuse to work with or support the far-right.
However, the big issue here is that Horizons are the party that are the most open to a Presidential coalition with Les Républicains, and as discussed previously, an open primary of the right and centre.
Meanwhile, since the 2022 legislative elections and over the last four years, the Macronists have been aggressively pursuing a strategy to construct a “Republican Arc” to create an environment in which any cooperation with the far-left or far-right is harshly punished.
With Grégoire falling within this category with his electoral decision not to cooperate with the far-left, he will likely be seen as a strong ally for the upcoming Presidential and Legislative elections, and any victory could be seen as an olive branch to Olivier Faure’s PS.
But, we’ll have to see how the votes today shake out.
⚓Macron unveils “France Libre” aircraft carrier
For the final story of the week:
On Wednesday 18 March, at the Naval Group site in Indret, near Nantes, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the latest major project for the French Republic: the aircraft carrier “France Libre”.
Invoking de Gaulle’s legacy and the spirit of resistance that defined Free France in 1940, Macron made the symbolism and the goal of this new military tool abundantly clear
“For him, for us, the French spirit is a spirit of resistance. It is a will that nothing can stop, the will to resist in order to remain free. An irreducible, invincible will, on national soil or elsewhere, in the face of occupation. A will that, like our aircraft carrier, can take to the seas if necessary, until victory.”
Every French aircraft carrier has carried a name from the history books: Charles de Gaulle, Georges Clemenceau, and Ferdinand Foch. They have frequently borrowed from a clear legacy of our military heroes and have been used as inspirations for future sailors in the French Navy.
The France-Libre continues that tradition, though with sharper intent than its predecessors and in a context where Macron is nearing the end of his second quinquennat, which has focused on rebuilding France’s defence posture in an increasingly violent and unstable world.
We saw this in his speech on nuclear doctrine at Île Longue a few weeks ago, and during his mediatised visit to the Charles-de-Gaulle in the eastern Mediterranean in early March. The naming ceremony was less a maritime milestone than a political declaration, with a healthy dose of legacy-building.
“This name seals a pledge for the future: to remain free, we must be feared; to be feared, we must be powerful; and to be powerful, we must be prepared for the effort required.”
The numbers behind that pledge are considerable. The France-Libre will measure 310 metres in length and weigh 80,000 tonnes, around 1.8x the mass of the Charles-de-Gaulle it will replace in 2038.
The France Libre will have a capacity for 40 aircraft, be equipped with three electromagnetic catapult rails compared to Charles de Gaulle’s two, and be capable of simultaneously launching and recovering aircraft, representing a great operational improvement over most existing carriers.
Naturally, this project comes with a cost, and the total bill will sit at around €10 billion.
However, only two countries in the world currently operate nuclear-powered aircraft carriers: the United States and France. This is a major force-projection tool and force multiplier, with French geopoliticians cheering this announcement, recognising the clear benefit of being the only European nation capable of such deployments.
And this is even more important when compared to other great naval powers that deploy aircraft carriers: China and India rely almost entirely on conventional propulsion for their aircraft carriers, and our British and Italian colleagues have vessels that use vertical takeoff aircraft, a less efficient deployment method for aircraft.
Construction of the France Libre’s hull is planned to begin in Saint-Nazaire in 2031, with the nuclear boiler rooms already being constructed at Indret.
Ukraine and the Middle East have changed what modern warfare looks like from the air and the sea, with Russia taking heavy losses against an opponent with no naval presence to speak of, and Iran bombing everything that moves while the Houthis lock down the Strait of Hormuz.
This is the context for which the France-Libre is being designed, and these lessons are already being integrated.
However, there is one complication worth raising.
For all of our talk of strategic autonomy and buying European, the electromagnetic catapult technology that is planned to be used in our future aircraft carrier will be provided by the American firm General Atomics, the same system fitted on the US Navy’s Gerald R. Ford-class carriers.
And this was clearly acknowledged by a presidential adviser, who, as reported by Le Monde, highlighted that “there is obviously a Plan B, should we face particular constraints,” clearly referring to the ongoing unstable and violent behaviour of the American Trump administration.
But is this enough? Does it satisfy our country’s strategic autonomy ambitions? Does it satisfy our position as a guarantor of peace on the European continent?
Your favourite newsletter and editor will heartily say no, and this is a problem that should be fixed sooner rather than later.
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the macroniste promises of a republican arc ring VERY hollow given that dati is openly caucusing with both macron's party and the RN. they should have insisted on a stronger line if they want to qualify for those cookies.
Julian, I will be watching Nice closely since that's home.
When you write "parties scrambling to make alliances" it makes me wonder. What evidence there is that the party rank and file realign their votes accordingly.?
Secondly, voter turnout is often low in local elections. So, voter enthusiasm for or against one candidate can be a factor. Any thoughts how that may figure in key races?