The incumbent left-wing mayor has held Marseille after a knife-edge race with Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National, taking 54 percent of the vote against the far right candidate's 40 percent.
Voting had been neck-and-neck between leftist mayor Benoît Payan and the far-right challenger Franck Allisio after the first round, with most pollsters saying the race was too close to call, but in the end Payan won comfortably, the final results show.
In another key battle ground the left-wing candidate Emmanuel Grégoire was announced as the winner in Paris. The former deputy to outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo pulled in 50 percent of the vote compared to 41 percent for his right-wing challenger Rachida Dati, the country's former culture minister.
READ ALSO: Left-winger Emmanuel Grégoire elected mayor of Paris after tight battle✎
Meanwhile in an extremely closely-fought race, the Green mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, held his seat against the right-wing challenger, local businessman Jean-Michel Aulas. Doucet took 50.6 percent of the vote to Aulas' 49.3 - Aulas had called for a recount citing what he said were procedural irrugularities.
Centrist former French PM Edouard Philippe, widely expected to be the centrist presidential candidate in 2027, held his seat as mayor of the port city of Le Havre with 47.7 percent of the vote.
The former prime minister finished ahead of Jean-Paul Lecoq (Communist) and Franck Keller (far right) who received 41.17 percent and 11.12 percent of the vote respectively.
Philippe - who served as prime minister for most of Emmanuel Macron's first term - is currently seen as the candidate with the best chance of beating the far right in the 2027 presidential election, however after the first round of voting he was in danger of losing his role as mayor of Le Havre. He had said that if he lost in the local race he would withdraw his candidacy for 2027.
However another former prime minister - centrist François Bayrou - lost his seat in Pau, where he has been mayor since 2014. Socialist Jérôme Marbot, running on a united left ticket, has won.
Meanwhile former French international rugby player Serge Blanco has been elected mayor of the south-west town of Biarritz, the club he played at for most of his career, on a combined right-centrist ticket.
In Nice the outgoing mayor Christian Estrosi has lost, after a bitter personal battle, to local MP Eric Ciotti who ran on a combined centre-right/far-right ticket, final results are 48 percent to Ciotti and 37 percent to Estrosi.
Le Pen's Rassemblement National had hoped to take the southern towns of Toulon and Nîmes, but failed in both - in Toulon the centre right candidate won, while in Nîmes the centre-left candidate is now mayor.
READ ALSO: Latest: Results from 5 French towns targeted by Le Pen's far-right✎
However the party has declared victory several smaller towns including Orange and Menton in south-east France, and Carcassonne and Castres in the south-west.
The far left La France Insoumise took the northern town of Roubaix with 53 percent of the vote.
In Bordeaux, the Green mayor Pierre Hurmic conceded defeat to the Macronist candidate Thomas Cazenave.
In the south-west town of Poitiers, in which a historic six people qualified for the second round of voting, the green mayor Léonore Moncond'huy was beaten by the right-wing candidate Anthony Brottier (47 percent to 40 percent).
France's municipales elect local mayors in all of the country's 35,000 communes, ranging from small villages to the biggest cities.
Although some towns elected their mayor with more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, in most places - including all the big cities - voting went to a second round on Sunday, March 22nd, to elect the mayor.
In contrast to the complicated formula for candidates who make it to round two from the first round of voting, in the second round it is very simple - the candidate with the highest score wins.
It had been a dramatic day at the polls with three deaths in polling stations around the country - an 82-year-old woman collapsed and died at a polling station in Carcassonne, while an 81-year-old man died in Annecy.
In Saint-Etienne, near Lyon, a man in his 80s who was standing as a candidate for Rassemblement National had a heart attack at the polling station and could not be revived.
Find a searchable list of the results in all France's 35,000 communes here.
Comments (1)