Marseille, France's second city and a long-standing haven for artists and progressives, is facing the prospect of falling to far-right rule. Polls suggest that the National Rally (RN) party, led by Marine Le Pen, could win the forthcoming municipal elections, with candidate Franck Allisio tied with the incumbent socialist mayor, Benoît Payan. For many residents, the far right is associated with the 1995 killing of Ibrahim Ali, a teenager shot by National Front militants while returning from a rap rehearsal.
The first round of voting is scheduled for 15 March, and nearly one in three of the city's 880,000 inhabitants plan to vote for the RN, a figure ten points higher than at the last local elections in 2020. Allisio, a former adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy who joined Le Pen's party in 2015, presents his immigrant background as embodying Marseille's diversity. The local left is bitterly divided, with the radical La France Insoumise candidate attacking Payan more than the far right.
A victory for the RN would be seismic, as the party has never seized a major French metropolis. National leaders, including party president Jordan Bardella, view winning Marseille as highly symbolic and a good omen for next year's presidential elections. The city has been ruled by a Green-left alliance called Marseille Spring since 2020, which challenged the clientelist system that dominated local politics for decades and was propelled to power by newer, left-leaning residents.
Marseille Spring's tenure has coincided with the city's reinvention as a hip tourist destination, drawing visitors with its Mediterranean lifestyle and progressive politics. However, Marseille's politics have always been contested. The right-wing Jean-Claude Gaudin served as mayor for 25 years, and the far right has had a foothold since the 1980s, expanding in villages swallowed by urban sprawl. Notably, a street renaming in honour of Ibrahim Ali was ignored by Gaudin but enacted by Payan after a year in office.
For many voters, Allisio does not fit the caricature of the far-right candidate, a fact his party is counting on. He describes his story as embodying Marseille's diverse heritage, yet his rise reflects the far right's expansion into former left-wing constituencies and its blurring of lines with the mainstream right across France.
