“…While medium-sized French cities form a heterogeneous whole, a majority of those located in central and north-east France and far from large cities are today prey to urban decline (Guéraut Piguet, 2023). Arising in the 1970s as a result of deindustrialization and peri-urbanization (Cauchi-Duval et al, 2016), this trend gathered steam at the end of the 2000s (Chouraqui, 2021) against a backdrop of the 'territorial withdrawal of the State' (Artioli, 2017;Chouraqui, 2020). This phenomenon is evidenced in population decline, a deterioration in the value of space, and the pauperization of inhabitants, which serve to transform the electoral sociology of the medium-sized cities in question as well as local political agendas, to the detriment of the socialists, as part of processes on which this article aims to shed light.…”