PARIS, March 15 (Reuters) - French voters head to the polls on Sunday to elect their mayors in a closely watched ballot seen as a test of the strength of the far-right 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.
Voting starts at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and ends at 8 p.m. In many medium to large cities, there will be a second round on March 22.
Local results can shape national momentum, especially when they take place so close to the presidential election, which opinion polls show the far-right National Rally (RN) could potentially win.
A TEST FOR THE RN
The anti-immigration, eurosceptic RN has so far struggled to make meaningful gains in municipal elections.
With candidates in several hundred municipalities, it does not expect a landslide, but it hopes to showcase growing popularity and clinch a few big wins that would further boost its presidential campaign.
"If the people of Marseille make a brave choice ... it will embolden and enlighten the French on the choice they will make next year," Franck Allisio, the RN candidate in France's second-biggest city, told Reuters.
Allisio is tied in first-round pollswith incumbent Socialist Mayor Benoit Payan, providing the RN with a once-unthinkable shot at power in a major French city.
FOCUS ON SECURITY
For sure, the thousands of separate municipal ballots are often focused on very local issues.
But opinion polls show security is voters' main priority in that vote, very much in line with the RN's law-and-order focus.
Among the bigger cities the RN is targeting is the southern Toulon, with a population of 180,000. It could also win in Menton, a Riviera town where former President Nicolas Sarkozy's son Louis is a candidate backed by centrist parties.
ALLIANCES
One key question is what alliances the RN will strike with other parties between the two rounds. Will it be the election where decades of tradition of shunning the far right breaks? Some, especially in mainstream parties on the right, are tempted to do so.
The left did well across France in the last municipal elections in 2020. It is now weakened nationally. Whether it can keep Paris, as well as some of the cities it won last time, such as Nantes for the Socialists or Lyon and Strasbourg for the Greens, will be closely watched.
Whether mainstream left-wing parties will strike alliances between the two rounds with the hard-left France Unbowed will also be key.
TWO ROUNDS
A second round will be held on March 22 in all cities where no single list wins more than 50% of the vote.
While there may be more scope to draw lessons from the second round than the first, all of the election carries high stakes for parties with the April 2027 presidential ballot approaching.
"People want to turn the page and they want to turn it with us," Perpignan's RN mayor Louis Aliot told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Michel Rose; Writing by Ingrid Melander, editing by Andrei Khalip)
