Paris mayor election result: Meet Leftist Emmanuel Gregoire who is elected to run France capital

Leftist Emmanuel Gregoire was on Sunday elected Paris mayor, beating right-wing former minister Rachida Dati and extending the Socialists' quarter-century rule in the French capital, according to projections. In France's second city Marseille, the leftist incumbent Benoit Payan was comfortably re-elected, beating far-right candidate Franck Allisio, projections from several pollsters suggested.

French voters went to the polls on Sunday to ​elect mayors in Paris, Marseille and more than 1,500 other cities and towns, in a test of the far right’s strength ​and the resilience of mainstream parties ahead of next year’s presidential election. Heading nearly 35,000 municipalities - from major cities to villages with only a few dozen residents - mayors are France's most trusted elected officials.

Many won enough votes to be elected in the first round last Sunday, but tight races in France's biggest cities are going to runoff elections. One of the key ballots is in Marseille, the ‌country's second-biggest city, where the ⁠second round ⁠pits the far-right National Rally (RN) against the incumbent Socialist mayor. A close race is also likely in Paris, where opinion polls show victory for either the conservatives or the left is within their margins of error.

Paris Mayor

In Paris, which has been run by the left since 2001, the Socialist candidate, Emmanuel Gregoire, was ahead in the first round. But a far-right ‌candidate decided to pull out of the runoff to help Rachida Dati, a conservative former justice minister, snatch the city away from the left, meaning it is now a very close race.

"I refuse to vote for the extremes. I prefer consensus and balance," said Malika ​Sif, 58, who voted ​for Gregoire in Paris' 18th district. The thousands of separate ⁠municipal ballots are often focused on very local issues and their outcome does not forecast who will win in the April 2027 presidential election.

But they show trends, in popularity and in the type of alliances that can be struck in an increasingly fragmented landscape.