The problem is that, to know who won, we can base ourselves on different parameters. Should we base ourselves on the greatest progression, on the best scores in the provinces, on the greatest number of mayorates or on the greatest number of elected officials at the regional level? Some prefer to point out personal scores, others rely on penetration rates… In reality, each party uses the parameter that suits it to try to demonstrate to the media and the population that it is they who came out on top.
Provost elected Walloon emperor, Magnette 3rd, Bouchez 8th…: here are the champions of preference votes in municipal elections in Wallonia
Sunday evening, the president of the PS, Paul Magnette, exclaimed: “The blue wave crashed against the red wall”. Wednesday evening, on Terzake (VRT), Georges Louis Bouchez, president of the MR, insisted that the MR was, “by far, the first French-speaking political group”. But the popular idea in the French-speaking political press is that the big winner of the vote would be Maxime Prévot, president of Les Engagés, because it is his party which recorded the best progress.
The solution that seems the most obvious at first glance to determine the big winner would be to look at the number of elected officials obtained by party. But, at this stage, no official body is able to give them to us. Remember that more than 50,000 people presented themselves to the provincial and municipal elections. Problem: many of these candidates presented themselves either on common lists, such as the Mayor’s List, in a cartel, or under names not directly identified as belonging to a party.
For the moment, no party has yet completely consolidated this data to know the percentage of elected officials it obtained at the regional level. In Brussels, political scientist Pascal Delwit (ULB) reconstructed the number of seats won by each party. In the capital, it appears that the socialist family is the winner with 165 seats. The liberal family won 161 seats. Ecolo-Groen has 109. Les Engagés, 78.
These figures can still change if elected officials decide to leave one group to join another or to become independent. This is the case, for example, of Mariam El Hamidine, outgoing mayor of Forest, who decided to leave Ecolo on Wednesday evening. We can then look at the color of the municipalities.
Once all 281 Brussels and Walloon municipalities have a mayor, it will be easier to describe the trend in power. “The mayor’s card is the only thing that speaks to voters. This is why it is also important for us to have as many mayorates as possible.”a party president tells us.
After the communal tensions, the negotiations for places in the provinces are poisoning the romance between the MR and Les Engagés
At the time of writing these lines, it is still difficult to identify which group is doing the best since negotiations are still slipping in many localities. In Brussels, the PS is first, with – for the moment – 8 municipalities out of 19. The Engagés have 4, the MR 3, DéFI 2 and Emir Kir 1. In Wallonia, the MR is first with 105 mayors, Les Engagés have 65, the PS has around fifty and Ecolo has three.
But the number of municipalities is not a sufficient criterion to determine who is riding the wave of success. The PS responds, for example, that it has the largest cities and therefore control over the largest part of the population…
The indicator most used to indicate success is currently the breakthrough in the provinces. There, it is clearly the MR who is in the lead, which his president does not hesitate to trumpet. The Liberals won 29.8% of the votes, compared to 24% for LE, 23.7% for the PS, 11.3% for the PTB, 8.8% for Ecolo and 0.9 for DéFI.
On the other hand, if we compare who has progressed the best compared to June, it is Les Engagés who come out on top, going from 20.7 to 24%, an evolution of 3.3% while the MR only evolves by 0.2%. Better yet: if we compare the provincials of 2018 to those of 2024, Les Engagés double their score (12.8% to 24%) while the MR only changes by 6.1 points.
The last narrative that is debated is that of confirmation at the ballot box. The MR and Les Engagés like to say that the election of October 13 extended the good results of June 9, proof that voters would trust them. This assertion still needs to be verified on the total number of municipalities. But it doesn’t really hold up when we look at the preferred votes of Walloon ministers and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation as well as those of outgoing federal ministers.
In Bièvre, David Clarinval (MR) cast 400 fewer votes than in the 2018 elections, when he was at the head of the only list in the commune. In Jodoigne, Mathieu Michel had the eighth score on his list while he was third while Anne-Catherine Dalcq only obtained 659 votes.
In Herve, Pierre-Yves Jeholet is 1000 votes behind the outgoing mayor. In Ham-sur-Heure, Adrien Dolimont lost 200 votes compared to 2018 when he was not head of the list. In Jurbise, reappointed mayor Jacqueline Galant lost 600 votes compared to 2018. In Soignies, François Desquesnes only improved by 17 votes. Today, the result of the polls therefore does not allow us to say that the action of the Azur ministers was validated by the voters.
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