French municipal elections, 2001

Municipal elections were held in France on 11 and 18 March 2001. These elections were marked by a setback for the left and a victory for the right one year before the 2002 presidential election. However, the capital, Paris and the second largest city, Lyon both switched to the left.

Following the second round, the right controlled 318 municipalities, the left 259.

The next elections were scheduled for 2007 but were re-scheduled to 2008 not to interfere with legislative and presidential elections in 2007.

After the loss of Le Havre after the preceding municipal elections, the Communist Party lost the cities it managed to reconquer in 1995 (Ciotat, Sète, Nîmes) like some of its former bastions (Drancy, Argenteuil, Dieppe, Montluçon).

The gain of Sevran or Arles (from the Socialist Party) were not enough to reverse the progressive collapse of "municipal Communism", a tendency already started since the 1983 election (with the loss of Nîmes, Sète, Reims, Levallois-Perret, Antony, or Sèvres) and confirmed in 1989 with the loss of Amiens.

As for the French Socialist Party lost in total 23 cities of more than thirty thousand inhabitants, whereas several party personalities undergo defeat in their respective towns. Catherine Trautmann, Minister of Culture, is not re-elected in Strasbourg, like Jack Lang in Blois. In Avignon, Élisabeth Guigou fails to unseat the RPR incumbent, Marie-Josée Roig. Martine Aubry becomes mayor of Lille only with 49.6% of the votes (and with a 53% abstention) in this city historically solid for the Socialists. Their victories in several cities such as Ajaccio, Auxerre (helped by the presence of two right-wing candidates in the second round), Dijon, or Salon-de-Provence, or in the major cities of Paris and Lyon, do not counterbalance the party's loses.

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