[Decoding France] - The Extremes Dominate as the 2027 Presidential Race Gets Underway

Decoding France is back ! Every month, we bring you a concise guide to a French political landscape that is looking particularly crowded as the country heads toward the 2027 presidential election.

This September, we look at a presidential campaign that is already well underway, driven by a strong appetite for change and for political radicalism. It is also a campaign that is increasingly buffeted by crises-most notably the energy crisis, which is reshaping both the political debate and the candidates’ proposals.

These multiple overlapping crises raise a fundamental question: How can voters trust a political class that is itself seen as part of the problem? How can politicians convince voters that they can solve a crisis when, in some sense, they are part of it? This is the conundrum facing candidates today.

Part of this analysis draws on the findings of the September wave of the French Electoral Study, conducted by Ipsos for Institut Montaigne and its partners, which surveyed more than 13,000 French registered voters. The survey looks not only at voting intentions but also at voters’ concerns and what they expect from the presidential election.

Radicalism Takes the Lead

With seven months to go before the presidential election, Marine Le Pen is consolidating her lead, polling at least 33 percent in the first round in every scenario tested. She is well ahead of every potential runner-up, whether Jean-Luc Mélenchon, at around 15 percent, or Édouard Philippe, between 14 and 21 percent.

The appetite for political transformation is just as striking. Fifty-four percent of respondents believe that French society needs far-reaching reform, and a further 26 percent say it must be radically transformed. The shift is even clearer in the changing perception of the political climate: Only 52 percent of voters currently believe that French politics is too radical, down sharply from 63 percent in April. Conversely, 48 percent believe that there are not enough radical ideas or approaches capable of opening up new avenues for change-up from just 37 percent in April, an 11-point increase in just five months.

One of the great paradoxes of this campaign is that now the race is underway in earnest, the parties at the extremes, on both the left and the right, are starting to moderate their rhetoric, set aside invective, and adopt a more inclusive tone. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for instance, is clearly trying to reach beyond his traditional base to voters who may still be put off by excessive radicalism.

At the same time, the candidates we might loosely call "moderates"-an admittedly unsatisfactory label-are responding to the French appetite for radical change by seasoning their platforms with a dash of radicalism, often in ways that feel forced and unconvincing. These candidates face a more serious problem, however: They struggle to offer a political narrative as clear and easy to grasp as those put forward by the far right and radical left. The "New France" promoted by La France Insoumise(LFI) on one side and the call by the Rassemblement National (RN) for "national preference" (priority for French citizens over foreigners in access to social goods such as jobs, housing, and benefits) on the other are exceptionally clear political platforms. The other political forces have yet to articulate an equally compelling offer.

Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon enjoy another important advantage: They have what might be called a head start in terms of presidential stature. Their candidacies are effectively uncontested within their respective movements, clearly identifiable to voters, and largely shielded from the internal divisions that are weakening the other political camps.

They are also the only two leading candidates who have run for president before-not once but three times each. Regardless of whether voters support them, repeated presidential campaigns confer a certain legitimacy, particularly on a candidate who has made it to the second round, as Marine Le Pen has twice.

Marine Le Pen’s growing standing is translating into electoral gains. In the Senate elections on September 27-the last vote before the presidential election-both the RN and LFI made gains. For the first time in its history, Marine Le Pen’s party will have a parliamentary group in the Senate-until now, it was seven senators short of forming one (10 are needed to be able to form a parliamentary group, and the RN has now 14 members). The RN owes this largely to the support of its ally, Éric Ciotti’s Union des droites pour la République (UDR). "This is a historic victory and a major milestone," commented Marine Le Pen. This sends a strong signal in the middle of the campaign, although it was expected: Since the Senate’s electoral college consists overwhelmingly of municipal council members, the election largely reflects the outcome of the municipal elections. From now on, the RN is firmly established in the French institutional landscape. This marks a significant shift.

There was another first at the other end of the chamber: the election of Gabriel Amard as LFI’s first senator, in the Rhône department. Amard, a member of the National Assembly, is-it’s important to note-the son-in-law of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who commented that he sees Amard’s election as a "good omen for 2027."

The overall balance of power in the Senate, however, remains unchanged: Les Républicains (LR) remain the largest group and, together with their centrist allies, retain their majority.

A Sense of Crisis Takes Over the Campaign-and Crowds Out Long-Term Thinking

The campaign is being repeatedly disrupted by crises, but not all crises are gaining the same traction with voters. France spent much of the summer battling massive wildfires, yet the environment has struggled to become a top political priority, ranking only third among voters’ concerns in our survey. A curious kind of autumn amnesia seems to have set in.

By contrast, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and its effect on fuel prices have hit the campaign head-on. Candidates are now forced to answer a pressing question: How can prices at the pump be brought down? Should measures be universal or targeted? Should fuel taxes be reduced, or even abolished?

Issues of this kind would normally be expected to hurt populist movements: Public debt, climate change, and a rapidly deteriorating international situation all expose areas in which the RN lacks credibility. Voters themselves acknowledge this, judging Marine Le Pen less convincing than other candidates on economic, climate, and international issues.

Paradoxically, however, these very issues appear to strengthen rather than weaken her. The perceived incompetence of the current government-and, more broadly, of successive governments over the past twenty years-has given rise to a powerful backlash. The populists may lack credibility on some of the biggest challenges facing the country, but they do not appear to be paying the political price for it.

As is so often the case, it is the extremes that are setting the agenda.

Marine Le Pen, for instance, devoted almost her entire rentrée speech (the traditional season-opening address) to housing-a subject closely tied to the cost of living, one of the RN’s core themes. But housing served another purpose that afternoon-the home became a metaphor for the nation. The RN’s decades-old slogan, "On est chez nous" ("This is our home"), was transposed from the nation to the private home. Being at home means securing one’s own protective border.

Marine Le Pen called for a nation of homeowners and builders, freed from environmental and regulatory constraints. Beneath the technical language of housing policy, however, the party’s familiar preoccupations were clearly visible: "national preference" and opposition to immigration, particularly in proposals concerning social housing and housing allowances.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, meanwhile, has succeeded in placing the issue of public debt at the center of the debate, including the possibility of its "cancellation"-or putting it on ice, or even throwing it into the fire.

Caught between these competing narratives, the moderates are struggling to make themselves heard.

The Moderates’ Credibility and the Race to Unite

Candidates ranging from the conservative right to the green left face a twofold challenge: credibility and unity, and the two are closely intertwined.

Take the Socialist primary, for example (​from October 9th to 10th for the first round, and October 16 to 17th for the second round). Its central purpose will be to produce a candidate who is both uncontested and broadly accepted. That requires strong participation: If only a few tens of thousands of voters turn out, the result will look underwhelming, and the winner’s legitimacy will suffer. For comparison, more than two million people took part in the 2011 Socialist primary, and more than four million participated in the primary organized by LR in 2016.

It will also be necessary for the rest of the Socialist camp to rally behind the winner. Without that, the primary is likely to produce a candidate rather than a genuine presidential contender.

The same logic applies to the center. The later the various centrist forces unite, the less credible the alliance will appear, and the harder it will be to overcome the divisions that have accumulated along the way. The center faces an additional and particularly awkward dilemma: How can its candidates draw on the credibility they acquired through a decade in government-both Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe served as prime minister under Emmanuel Macron-without inheriting the hostility directed at the outgoing president?

What gives them their political credibility is also their greatest vulnerability.

Finally, all of these political camps face the same fundamental challenge: building credible programs rooted in a coherent vision of France and its future rather than simply defining themselves in response to Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A political project constructed primarily in opposition to the extremes inevitably loses some of its power to persuade. Each political camp-the right, the center, and the left-needs to articulate its own vision and attach to it a distinctive program. Otherwise, voters risk being offered a binary choice between the extremes and everyone else rather than a genuine choice between competing visions of the country.

The question for the coming months is, therefore, not simply who will make it to the second round. It is whether France’s political mainstream can produce alternatives compelling enough to persuade voters that change does not necessarily have to mean radicalism.

Copyright Thomas SAMSON / AFP

President of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) parliamentary group and 2027 French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (C) flanked by RN President Jordan Bardella (L) at the end of a rally for the start of the new political year in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on September 13, 2026.