Mas Llaro had always voted for mainstream law.
But disaffected and tired of the status quo, the Talaus, like many others, voted for the far-right party for the first time last year, attracted by Mr Aliot’s emphasis on cleanliness and crime, and said their apartment had been broken into twice.
Despite being pleased with the mayor’s performance, Mr Talau said he will still join the far-right dam in next year’s presidential contest and hold his nose to vote for Mr Macron. But Ms. Talau was now considering casting a ballot for Ms. Le Pen.
“She put water in her wine,” said Ms. Talau, adding that Mr. Macron was not “hard enough”.
Mr Aliot’s opponent in 2014 and 2020, a center-right politician named Jean-Marc Pujol, had pushed his way to the right in an unsuccessful move to fend off the far right. He increased the number of police officers and, according to the government, gave Perpignan the highest number per capita in any major city in France.
Even so, many of his key far-right supporters appeared to have more faith in crime and were still defected, while many left-wing beavers complained that they had been ignored and refused to participate in dam construction again, said Agnès Langevine, who represented them Greens and the Socialists in the 2020 mayoral elections.
“And they told us, ‘In 2022, when it’s between Macron and Le Pen, I won’t do it again,'” she added.
Mr Lebourg, the political scientist, said Mr Aliot had also won over higher-income conservative voters by adopting a general economic message – the same strategy that Mrs Le Pen followed.
