At a Paris meeting hall this week, hundreds of leftwing voters braved a rainstorm to gather chanting: “Unity! Unity!” They were celebrating the 90th anniversary of France’s Popular Front, a leftwing alliance formed in the 1930s amid fears that the far right could take power. But their concerns were more immediate: a year before the 2027 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) - already the biggest single opposition party in parliament - is high in the polls, closer to power than ever before, and the business community that once shunned it is now openly meeting with senior party figures.
“Voters on the left want unity - so let’s cut the bullshit and build it,” said Danielle Simonnet, a Paris MP for the leftwing party L’Après, who warned divisions would let the far right cement its gains. President Emmanuel Macron cannot constitutionally run for a third consecutive term next spring, leaving the race more open than it has been for a decade. But an unprecedented and bewilderingly high number of figures - about 30 - have expressed interest in running, almost all focused on holding back the far right. The political debate is more about tactics, polling, and which personalities may have the charisma to face off against Le Pen or her protégé Jordan Bardella than deep policy issues.
The leftwing parties who gathered in Paris - including the Socialist party leadership, the Greens, and several smaller groups - vowed to press on with a leftwing primary race for a united candidate in October, seeking to reproduce the New Popular Front that grouped together to hold back the RN in the 2024 snap parliamentary election. But the initiative is struggling as the left remains fragmented, with key figures preferring to run alone. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 74, the veteran radical left leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), announced this week he would run for president for the fourth time, having come third in 2022, brushing aside polling showing high antipathy towards him outside his own party.
Many others on the left are contemplating bids, including centre-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann. Even former Socialist president François Hollande sees a potential comeback opportunity - despite the fact that in 2016 he renounced running for a second term because he was the least popular French president since WWII, with a satisfaction rating that had dropped to just 4%. Hollande said in a recent magazine interview that he felt he had crucial international experience. On the far right, Le Pen awaits an appeal trial verdict scheduled for 7 July to see if her conviction for embezzling European parliament funds and the ban preventing her from running for public office will be upheld. If so, Bardella, 30, would run in her place. Both are polling high.
On the right and centre, a multitude of personalities vie for space. Edouard Philippe, Macron’s first prime minister, will stand on a centre-right ticket. Another former PM, Gabriel Attal, wants to represent Macron’s centrist party Renaissance but faces rivalry from several others, including justice minister Gérald Darmanin. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former hardline interior minister who served under Macron, wants to be the rightwing candidate for Les Républicains but faces rivalry inside his party from figures like MP Laurent Wauquiez, and from outsiders like the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard. Former PM Dominique de Villepin - who gained international fame articulating France’s opposition to the 2003 Iraq war and has been recently vocal on Gaza - is also seeking to run. For him and many candidates, the challenge will be gathering obligatory backing signatures from 500 elected officials.
Amid the high number of men seeking candidacy, some senior women at the left’s meeting warned that “testosterone” or “ego” should not be deciding factors. Antoine Bristielle, director of opinion at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès thinktank, said it was crucial for candidates to understand the desire among French voters for an in-depth policy debate on social and economic issues. At the last presidential election in 2022, Macron beat Le Pen without an in-depth discussion of his policies. Then a 2024 snap election left parliament without an absolute majority and rudderless. Bristielle warned: “The risk is that this election focuses solely on rejecting the RN - a strategic vote with the message: ‘This person is the most central, the most consensual, maybe they can beat the RN’ - even if that person is proposing nothing concrete… That would be dramatic because no in-depth policy issues would be settled.”
Top of French voters’ concerns is healthcare - including difficulties accessing doctors in remote or deprived areas and cuts to the hospital system - as well as the cost of living and the French social security system. But Bristielle said voters’ main socioeconomic worries were not at the centre of political debate, “reinforcing the idea among French people that politicians are cut off from their concerns”. Crucially, polling last month by Ipsos showed 74% of French voters wanted either a radical transformation or deep changes in France - a substantial increase in the past three years. Bristielle added: “There has been a real feeling of immobilism in France… People want this election to be a real democratic moment which settles key issues, but we’re still very far from that.”
Christelle Craplet, director of opinion at Ipsos BVA pollsters, said the election was impossible to predict at this early stage, with only Mélenchon on the radical left and either Le Pen or Bardella for the RN as key candidates in place. She said: “Between these, we have a space which is not clear politically, with a large amount of candidates. This shows the fragmentation of the French political landscape and the difficulty of personalities to emerge in a consensual way.” Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has called for policies to be put forward, saying: “When a real presidential campaign kicks off… with a real debate on ideas, that will create a more dignified atmosphere.”