French
far right’s success in Champagne buoys presidential dream
Marine Le
Pen and Jordan Bardella struck an upbeat tone in the land of sparkling wines.
March 19,
2026 2:47 pm CET
By Marion
Solletty
CHÂLONS-EN-CHAMPAGNE,
France — In rural Champagne, the National Rally is finding the momentum and
enthusiasm it needs to believe that it can win the French presidency in 2027.
The first
round of local elections on Sunday delivered mixed results for the far-right
party, highlighting how a decisive breakthrough still eludes Marine Le Pen,
Jordan Bardella and their allies in France’s biggest cities.
Despite
strong performances in key southern cities like Marseille and Toulon, where the
National Rally scored 35 percent and 42 percent of the vote respectively, the
runoff this Sunday likely won’t be an emphatic victory given how other
movements have teamed up against the National Rally.
But the
party’s leadership is relishing its growing popularity in Champagne and other
areas of France’s heartland where the moderate right formerly prevailed.
The
National Rally candidate in the famed Champagne capital of Epernay garnered 31
percent of the vote, doubling the party’s score from the previous local
elections in 2020 partly thanks to higher turnout. And in the bucolic town of
Châlons-en-Champagne, 45 kilometers from the region’s largest city, Reims, the
far-right candidate came just a few hundred votes short of the first-place
finisher, incumbent Mayor Benoist Apparu, a minister under former President
Nicolas Sarkozy.
The dream
is that combining growing rural support with the surging number of far-right
voters in the French sunbelt in addition to the National Rally’s northern
strongholds will be enough to deliver the poll-topping party their big prize in
the 2027 presidential election.
“It is
through these [local] roots that we will rebuild France, town by town,” Le Pen
said at a rally Wednesday on the outskirts of Châlons-en-Champagne. “The great
victory we are preparing for next year will not be handed to us, it will be
conquered.”
Speaking
to a crowd of about 2,000 people in a mid-sized convention center, Le Pen and
other National Rally heavyweights framed the upcoming runoffs as another
example of President Emmanuel Macron and his allies trying to “ignore, if not
shut down people’s voice.” Many of the cross-party alliances that emerged after
the first round of the contest look poised to again block the party from
winning control of major cities in the runoffs this Sunday.
Lawmaker
Laurent Jacobelli elicited cheers in the crowd when he slammed those strategic
partnerships as a “ménage à trois between Macronism, Socialism and the fake
right” on stage.
Ahead of
the rally, a small gathering in the city’s historic center on Wednesday
gathered around 300 people protesting the National Rally’s presence, but they
were stopped by police before they could reach the rally’s venue.
Unite the
right
In Reims,
the National Rally landed a symbolic win this week when its candidate,
Anne-Sophie Frigout, merged with a center-right candidate, Stéphane Lang from
Les Républicains ahead of the runoff.
Such
alliances, now openly called for by Bardella, used to be anathema for centrist
parties who have pledged to keep the National Rally at arm’s length.
“I am
sure that this alliance is going to reproduce itself everywhere in the weeks
and months to come,” Frigout told POLITICO at the rally between two selfies
with local supporters. “This is what our voters are asking for here.”
The Reims
merger is being touted by the National Rally and comes amid increasing support
for a union on the right. But whether the merger is indicative of a greater
trend within the ranks of Les Républicains remains to be seen.
Lang, who
failed to qualify for the runoff, was immediately expelled from his party for
the rogue move. And given he and Frigout together scored 28.7 percent of the
vote in the first round, the alliance is unlikely to lead to victory.
Historically,
the complex dynamic of ad hoc, last-minute alliances that shape local elections
in France’s two-round system has worked against the National Rally, with the
far right accusing the rest of the political class of conspiring to keep it out
of power.
But its
leaders now hope they can break that glass ceiling ahead of next year’s
presidential race.
During
his speech at the rally, Bardella’s message to France’s conservative party was
simple: “Join us,” he said.
“We are
facing a wall that is being built against us,” Jacobelli told POLITICO on the
sidelines of the rally. “It is not a glass ceiling, it is a reflex of
self-preservation” from other parties.
During
Bardella’s speech, a small group overcome by enthusiasm chanted “Jor-dan
president, Jor-dan president” — forgetting for the moment that Marine Le Pen,
who had a front row seat to the scene, is still supposed to be their
presidential candidate pending a decision in her appeal of a five-year election
ban.
In the
crowd, supporters vigorously approved both leaders’ odes to the working class
and their chastising of leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“If
Mélenchon goes through, we lose France forever,” Jordan Delvallée, a blue-eyed,
22-year-old mechanic who came to the rally with a younger friend. “There is no
better party than [the National Rally],” he said, even if “everybody is against
them.”
“The
French get cold feet at second round because they are scared, but one shouldn’t
be afraid of change.”
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