The importance of the municipal level in our lives is hardly reflected in the platforms of candidate lists for elections. The LGBTI+ Engagement Index and the Paris sans sida association have produced work that sheds light on this, notably using Paris as a case study.
“Two posts about the municipal elections in a few days, two posts about Parisian candidacies. You know there are elections in these spaces beyond the ring road that account for 97% of the country’s population?” As one of our readers pointed out, municipal elections are not the easiest to cover for a small newsroom like têtu. Between not covering them and limiting ourselves to the Paris case to illustrate the divides, we chose the second option, all the more valid since the LGBT population is significant in the capital.
To illuminate the debate and provide a broader reading of this electoral sequence, the LGBTI+ Engagement Index collective, in partnership with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, conducted an original study on the consideration of these issues in the 2026 municipal campaign, surveying 40 list leaders across 15 major French cities: Bordeaux, Dijon, Le Havre, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Perpignan, Reims, Rennes, Strasbourg and Toulouse. “Is the goodwill of candidates enough to compensate for the blind spots in the programs?”, asks the Index.
#Municipales2026 : what place for LGBTI+ issues? The LGBTI+ Engagement Index collective analyzed candidate list programs in 15 major cities https://t.co/v3bZTxZ3iJ
— Fondation Jean-Jaurès (@j_jaures) March 4, 2026
LGBT, who cares?
First finding: “No RN/RN-UDR list has responded to the LGBTI+ Engagement Index’s inquiries, despite repeated outreach to all political forces.” This tends to relativize the ostentatious courting of a gay electorate by Marine Le Pen’s party.
Second finding: “The absence of LGBTI+ issues from the local media and political debate, in striking contrast with the scale of needs identified on the ground.” On this point, the authors identify several municipal competencies: “Support for the associative fabric, prevention and fight against violence, social and educational policies, welcoming users, training employees, urban planning and public space design, etc.” The municipal level, the report notes, “is one of the levels where the effectiveness of rights materializes and translates into the daily lives of the people concerned.”
“The municipal level allows for engagement in a proximity-based register, without reigniting more polarizing national debates.”
The difficulty in producing concrete proposals that improve the lives of LGBT people translates differently depending on the political affiliation of the lists surveyed. On the left, the obstacle is sidestepped by leaning “more toward incorporating these issues into an emancipatory, politicized and structured perspective”, according to “a historically centralized approach to LGBTI+ rights.” In short, few municipal proposals but a defense of LGBT people and their rights at the national level.
If only 46% of left-wing lists identify the municipal level as the most relevant for action, that figure is 90% for right-wing lists. As the study notes, this is like a refuge, since “the municipal level allows for engagement in a proximity-based register, without reigniting more polarizing national debates” and “to intervene without explicitly recognizing LGBT+ audiences, by integrating these issues into general equality or social cohesion policies.”
“The number of lists seems not to fully measure the extent of their competencies in this area.”
The LGBTI+ Engagement Index measures a clear gap between words and actions. “The number of lists seems not to fully measure the extent of their competencies in this area”, and they seem anyway unwilling to venture onto this terrain. The report thus challenges “the belief of candidates that taking a political stance on these issues constitutes an electoral risk: mentioning these topics would provoke the misunderstanding of uninvolved voters, who would judge them as unimportant compared to other issues.”
Rest assured that, unsurprisingly, the left performs better in addressing LGBT issues, particularly in the largest cities. “This phenomenon reflects the political, financial and administrative capacities of these cities, which go hand in hand with a denser associative fabric, and seems to confirm that municipalities with resources and visibility are more expected on these questions”, the report notes.
In Paris, Dati’s right vs. Bournazel’s right
The Paris municipal campaign is precisely the subject of another study, carried out by Paris sans sida. Based on the measures it proposes within its advocacy “Battant·es,” the organization sent 20 questions to the four main list leaders on the right and the left: Emmanuel Grégoire, Rachida Dati, Sophia Chikirou, Pierre-Yves Bournazel.
The reading of the responses is particularly interesting in this second round, where only three lists remain in the race, that of Pierre-Yves Bournazel (right, Horizons) having chosen to merge with Rachida Dati’s list (right, Les Républicains). While it was expected that left-wing lists would support the association’s proposals, the differences in responses from the right-wing lists become highly significant at the moment of their alliance…
✅Serez-vous le Maire d’une ville sans transmission du VIH ? @egregoire répond au questionnaire d’ELCS ! ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/SXOXdMNzMh
— Elus Locaux Contre le Sida (@ElusContreSida) March 5, 2026
On the promise to defend the principle of access to State Medical Assistance (AME), Pierre-Yves Bournazel answers affirmatively, while Rachida Dati says “no”, arguing a “necessity to transform AME deeply”. The same discrepancy on the idea of a motion prohibiting measures to expel people living with HIV: “Yes”, reiterates Bournazel, “no”, says Dati. A repeat on the specific support mechanisms for chemsex users, with Rachida Dati specifying: “I will refuse any project that proposes to instead support in consumption.” Which of these two visions would prevail if the Paris right wins? The withdrawal of Pierre-Yves Bournazel and Clément Beaune from the second-round alliance list foreshadows the answer.
In the study published by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, there is, however, a note of hope in the chapter “The place of trans people in the programs: an indicator of political maturity”. There one reads that if “trans identity is politicized much more strongly on the left”, two right-wing lists claimed “an administrative and functional approach”. Indeed, two candidates not affiliated with the left had signed, in December last year, the manifesto published by têtu· engaging them to finally facilitate the lives of trans people and, more broadly, queer families: Pierre-Yves Bournazel (Paris) and Pierre Jakubowicz (Strasbourg), both members of the Horizons right, of Édouard Philippe. The possibility of a right that pushes La Manif pour tous back into the closet in 2027 is not to be ruled out.
