2027 Presidential Election: Who Can Actually Beat the RN?

Share:

The facts

The next presidential election is set for April 18 and May 2, 2027. Emmanuel Macron cannot run again: the Constitution caps consecutive terms at two. The seat is open. To appear on the ballot, each candidate needs at least 500 signatures from elected officials, spread across at least 30 départements or overseas territories — a filter that sharply narrows the starting field: 12 candidates in 2022, 11 in 2017.

The biggest name in this election is still Marine Le Pen. On July 7, 2026, the Paris court of appeal upheld most of her conviction for misusing public funds, but reduced her ineligibility* to 45 months, 30 of them suspended — already covered by the time served since 2025. The practical outcome: she remains eligible for 2027. She immediately filed a final appeal to France's supreme court*, which suspends her sentence while the case is heard. The court has said it intends to rule before the first round, without giving a firm date — a timeline it has itself called "subject to change."

Despite that legal uncertainty, she still leads every poll. Between August 18 and 28, 2026, three different pollsters (Harris Interactive, Ifop-Fiducial, Elabe) put her between 33% and 38% in the first round, far ahead of anyone else — Jordan Bardella, her deputy and backup plan should her ineligibility be confirmed, scores similarly whenever he's tested in her place.

On the other side, neither the right nor the left has managed to unite behind a single candidate. On the right, the idea of a primary* is fading. Bruno Retailleau, chosen as the candidate by Les Républicains in April 2026, is charting his own course with a platform further to the right. For their part, Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, figures of the centrist bloc*, are said to have agreed that whichever of them polls worse will step aside for the other — without saying which, or when.

On the left, the fragmentation is even starker. Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced his own candidacy on May 3, 2026, outside any primary. A primary open to the whole non-Mélenchon left was meant to follow. But on July 9, the Socialist Party chose to run its own closed primary with Place publique instead, which caused the broader plan to collapse. Two days later, Clémentine Autain withdrew her candidacy, denouncing the "pile-up of candidacies"; for her part, Marine Tondelier chose to run independently for the Greens rather than join the PS/Place publique primary. That primary is going ahead anyway, in two rounds on October 9-10 and 16-17, 2026: Raphaël Glucksmann, Ségolène Royal and Olivier Faure are all running in it, alongside two other Socialist MPs. The result: at least four separate left-wing candidacies (Mélenchon, the PS/Place publique primary, Tondelier, and possibly more), on top of a right that is just as fractured.

One thing the numbers above can't capture: perceptible discontent within part of the traditional left-wing electorate could translate into mobilization or street pressure on declared candidates, beyond the primaries alone. Neither candidates nor pollsters have any incentive to commission a poll testing that hypothesis — so it's absent from the polls cited here not because it's unlikely, but simply because it's never measured (see our method, in French).

And the runoff itself? An Ifop-Fiducial poll from August 24-25 has Marine Le Pen beating every one of the six rivals tested: 54% against Gabriel Attal, 54% against François Hollande, 55% against Raphaël Glucksmann, and up to 67% against Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Hollande, not a declared candidate and absent from any primary, has never really left the stage since returning to the National Assembly in 2022: since 2026 he's been showing growing signs of preparing a comeback (a fundraising association, campaign offices in Paris), as a fallback should Raphaël Glucksmann falter. Other pollsters, like Odoxa, have published configurations in which Édouard Philippe would beat her instead — a gap between polls that shows how much the outcome depends on which name each side ultimately settles on, not on some already-fixed trend.

We covered this story back in early August, right after Marine Le Pen's candidacy had just been cleared on appeal (see our article, in French, for how this landscape first took shape). Three weeks on, nothing is really settled: either a camp finally manages to unite and becomes competitive against the RN, or the current fragmentation simply drags on, or it gets even worse, between failed primaries and legal uncertainty that lasts all the way to the vote.

Beyond the duel with the RN itself, several other issues will shape the campaign between now and April 2027. The budget, a perilous exercise for the Lecornu government, comes back around every autumn (see our article, in French). Pensions, an explosive file no one wants to reopen, will resurface too (see our article, in French). And foreign interference in the vote itself — hacking, recommendation algorithms — will stay under watch (see our article, in French). Climate will also weigh on the debate, with an already-cut environment budget and shaky 2030 commitments (see our article, in French). Purchasing power, immigration and security round out the list of the most-watched themes.

Scénario will keep following this story through the first round, and there will likely be plenty of twists along the way: the outcome of the PS/Place publique primary in mid-October, the supreme court's ruling on Marine Le Pen's appeal, and whether or not Édouard Philippe and Bruno Retailleau reach a deal on the right.

To help place who's who: here are the main parties and their representatives, from the far right to the far left, with their known odds of beating the RN in the runoff.