Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet is right’s choice to be next Paris mayor

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet won an outright majority (Reuters)

The former French environment minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet was elected on Monday night as centre-right candidate for the Paris mayoral election next year.

After a chaotic “electronic election”, entirely conducted on the internet, Ms Kosciusko-Morizet, 39, the favourite, won outright with 58 per cent of the 20,000 votes cast.

There will therefore be no second round and “NKM”, as she is known, will be the principal challenger to another woman, the Paris deputy mayor, Anne Hidalgo next year. It now seems certain, as long expected, that Parisians will elect a woman as mayor, for the first time , in the municipal elections next spring.  

The four day, primary election organised by France’s main opposition party, the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) was muddled by the discovery by journalists that it was possible to vote several times over. A last minute hard-right campaign to “stop NKM” because she had abstained in the parliamentary vote on gay marriage came to nothing.

The anti-gay marriage candidate, Pierre-Yves Bournazel came third with 10.7 per cent of the vote.