How France works
Mayors' party and commune finances
Whether a left or a right mayor changes a commune's spending, debt and jobs.
A municipal election won or lost by a few votes gives a town hall its colour almost by chance. Across the 2014 and 2020 elections, this page compares communes where a left list narrowly beat a right one with those where it narrowly lost. Over the following term, running costs per head differed by and end-of-term debt by per head; none of the pooled differences is statistically significant.
Evidence
Left and right towns differ in many ways besides their mayor, so comparing them says little. Close elections avoid this. Where a left list beat a right one by a few votes, or lost by a few, which side won was close to chance. Across the 2014 and 2020 municipal elections, the communes where the left narrowly won are compared with those where it narrowly lost, on what changed over the following term.
Show the data as a table
| Outcome | Design | Year | Estimate | 95% range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating spending per head | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | -0.9% | -3.8% to +2.0% |
| Staff costs per head | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | +3.2% | -1.4% to +7.9% |
| Operating revenue per head | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | -1.2% | -3.9% to +1.6% |
| Private jobs | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | -1.3% | -6.0% to +3.5% |
| Tax households | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | -0.5% | -2.1% to +1.1% |
| Income per household | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | -0.3% | -2.0% to +1.3% |
| Placebo: staff costs, term before | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | +0.5% | -1.6% to +2.6% |
| Placebo: private jobs, term before | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | +2.9% | -1.5% to +7.3% |
| Placebo: income per household, term before | Left mayor rather than right | 2025 | +0.8% | -0.5% to +2.1% |
None of the pooled differences between narrowly elected left and right mayors is statistically significant. Between a narrowly elected left mayor and a right one, running costs per head differ by , staff costs by , equipment spending by per head and end-of-term debt by per head; private jobs by and income per household by . The placebos, the same changes over the term before the election, are near zero, as they should be. Term by term, two results stand out: over 2014-2017, left mayors ended with less debt per head; over 2020-2025, private jobs grew less in their towns. With this many comparisons one or two are expected to stand out by chance; neither term result should be read on its own. French communes must balance their operating budget and may borrow only to invest, and most of their grants follow formulas: the room a new majority has is narrow.
Races whose top two lists were one left and one right, in communes of 1,000 inhabitants and more (2014) or 3,500 and more (2020, where only those have a political label), with centre lists counted as right; counting them apart gives the same picture. Ranges are 95% intervals from the regression standard errors. There are slightly fewer narrow left wins than narrow left losses, a dip within the noise of about 50 races per point of margin that a sharper test could check. Election results from the Ministère de l'Intérieur; the code is analysis/politics.ml and the results are in results.csv.