By Michel Rose, Juliette Jabkhiro and Ingrid Melander
PARIS/MARSEILLE, March 22 (Reuters) - France's far-right National Rally (RN) failed to win the cities of Marseille and Toulon which they had hoped to claim in Sunday's municipal votes, a setback that gave hope to embattled mainstream parties ahead of next year's presidential election.
In another key battleground, Socialist Party candidate Emmanuel Gregoire won Paris' mayoral race, beating conservative former minister Rachida Dati and ensuring the French capital remains left-wing.
The municipal elections were closely watched across France for clues ahead of the 2027 presidential election, which opinion polls have shown the anti-immigration, eurosceptic RN could win.
The thousands of separate municipal ballots are often focused on very local issues and their outcome does not forecast who will succeed centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
But they show trends in popularity and in the type of alliances that can be struck in an increasingly fragmented political landscape, and senior politicians from all parties were quick to claim Sunday's outcome was good news for them.
NEXT STEP: THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Senior RN officials rejected suggestions the party's defeat in Toulon showed it had hit a "glass ceiling" ahead of the presidential election, saying it had won dozens of local constituencies where it previously had no presence.
"The National Rally and its candidates have achieved tonight, in this municipal election, the biggest breakthrough in its entire history," RN chief Jordan Bardella said.
His anti-immigration party won re-election in the southern city of Perpignan in the first round, and won smaller cities, too. Eric Ciotti, a former mainstream conservative who is now an ally of the RN, won in Nice on Sunday, bringing France's fifth-biggest city under far-right control.
But the RN's failure to win several other larger cities, and in particular in Marseille, its most coveted prize, may show limits to its growing popularity.
Meanwhile, with wins projected in France's two biggest cities, the Socialist Party, long weakened nationally, saw reasons for hope.
"Paris will be the heart of the resistance" to any union of the mainstream right and far-right, Socialist winner Gregoire said after he crossed Paris on a bicycle - a nod to the left's green policies in the French capital.
Senior politicians on the mainstream right said the municipal elections showed they needed to be united to win - especially in next year's presidential election.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said he was re-elected mayor in his northern city of Le Havre, in a boost to his hopes of running for president in 2027.
Philippe, a centre-right politician who served as prime minister under the centrist Macron, said "there were reasons to be hopeful" in the values of France and that the extremes can be beaten.
MARSEILLE, PARIS
In the second-biggest city Marseille, the incumbent, Socialist Mayor Benoit Payan, was re-elected with just under 54% of the votes, according to an Elabe poll for BFM TV. Other polls also showed him winning. He had been neck-and-neck with the RN in the first round, and was boosted after his hard-left rival pulled out of the run-off to prevent a far-right victory.
"This city, which some believed lost, showed its most beautiful face, showed that it was capable of resisting," said Payan.
The Socialist Party said it had also beaten Francois Bayrou, a center-right former prime minister of Macron, in the city of Pau.
The hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) looked set to win in Roubaix, a city of nearly 100,000 in northern France, an Ifop-Fiducial poll for TF1, LCI and Sud Radio showed, in good news for a party that had so far not focused much on local elections.
"Traditional parties are losing ground," Manuel Bompard, of LFI, said.
(Additional reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro in Marseille, Gianluca Lo Nostro, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Inti Landauro, Elizabeth Pineau, Gus Trompiz and John Irish in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Michel Rose, Mark Porter, Peter Graff and Diane Craft)
