“The French political system is collapsing”, by Hakim El Karoui

The municipal elections of March 2026 will have produced something unexpected: confirmation that the French political system has lost its capacity to generate majorities, balances and perhaps soon alternations.

Each camp claims its successes – the left its metropolises, the right its medium-sized towns, the National Rally (RN) its peripheral conquests. Everyone is right, and that is precisely what is worrying. A vote where everyone wins is a vote where everyone loses.

Four Frances who ignore each other

What these elections have mapped is a sociological fragmentation that has become structural. The large, qualified metropolises vote to the left, the medium-sized towns to the right, the outskirts to the RN, the working-class suburbs to La France insoumise (LFI).

The geographic location of a voter is now one of the best predictors of their electoral behavior – much more than their ideological convictions. The left-right divide, which has structured two centuries of French political life, is disappearing in favor of a social geography whose Borders harden poll after poll. The logical consequence of this grid is a balance of non-expansion: each bloc is protected in its space and blocked from that of the others.

Campaigns without a purpose

In this frozen landscape, the programmatic debate has disappeared. The platforms – education, housing, transport, ecological transition – were largely interchangeable from one camp to another. What structured the competition was something else: the geometry of the alliances and the disqualification of opponents.

The central question of the left campaign was less « quel projet pour nos villes ? » what “Can we govern with LFI?”. Negotiations conducted in forty-eight hours on purely arithmetic bases produced unstable, difficult to read, often counterproductive coalitions.

Furthermore, the campaigns were organized around the moral questioning of adversaries rather than the examination of proposals: the extreme right assimilated to fascism, the extreme left referred to anti-Semitism, the center accused of compromise. This shift has become the ordinary grammar of French political competition – and it is, at a time when 2027 is looming, the most worrying lesson of this election.

The disappearance of the pivot

The fact with the greatest consequences, however, remains elsewhere. Leading government party, second force in the National Assembly, Renaissance is almost absent from the municipal landscape. The defeat of François Bayrou in Pau – 344 votes apart – illustrates an erosion that the polls had underestimated.

What these results sanction goes beyond the fate of a party: it is a regulatory function which disappears. Since 2017, the central bloc has organized the second rounds, aggregated the moderate electorates, and arbitrated between the camps. Without this point of balance, dynamics become polarized, coalitions become unpredictable and the system loses its capacity to produce stable majorities. Emmanuel Macron’s intervention in the Council of Ministers [dans l'entre-deux-tours] to warn against « arrangements » with “Les extrêmes” says less an authority in office than an influence in the process of exhaustion.

When the rules of the game disappear

For decades, the threat of the RN in the second round was enough to unite the others. In Nice, part of the right joined forces with the RN to bring Eric Ciotti to town hall. In Paris, LFI maintained its list without withdrawal instructions. The implicit norms, withdrawal, voting discipline, coherence of alliances, are eroding.

For 2027, the consequence is direct: a second round against the RN will produce a barrier of uncertain magnitude, depending on the configuration of candidates and a dynamic that nothing can guarantee anymore. Those who count on the Republican reflex to do the work for them risk experiencing this.

Philippe in the lead, in a system without a compass

Edouard Philippe emerges from this election as the best positioned for 2027. His re-election in Le Havre, in a context of general fading away from the presidential camp, should result in a significant increase in voting intentions. He embodies what the moment seems to demand: a real territorial anchor, managerial credibility, sufficient distance from the five-year term.

Its advantage is more due to the obliteration of others than to its own momentum. And, above all, it is part of a system which has lost its regulations. A decomposition can lead to a recomposition – it can also produce an impasse, a balance of blocks without a possible majority. It is in this open space, without precedent in the V^e Republic, as the presidential sequence begins.