The field for France’s presidential election in 2027 currently resembles the starting line-up at the Paris or London marathon, writes John Lichfield.
There are a few genuine contenders (maybe four or five). There are the people who run because they always run (maybe another half a dozen). And there is a crowd of people dressed up as King Kong or Big Bird or Obélix. They have no chance. They just want to be stared at for a while.
The total number of candidates – “declared, likely to declare or said to be thinking about declaring”– has reached 47, according to the website www.candidator.fr. About 30 can be considered serious or half-way serious.
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I have excluded the singer-TV presenter Patrick Sébastien and the supermarket owner Michel-Edouard Leclerc. I have also excluded the former Prime Ministers Michel Barnier and Elisabeth Borne (serious people but unlikely to run).
That still leaves many more than in any previous French presidential election. Last time in 2022 there were 12. The record is 16 in 2002. In the first presidential election of the Fifth Republic in 1965, there were six.
The plague of would-be presidents is causing alarm in the French and British press. A big and scattered field in the first round next April will benefit the extremes, they fear.
It could favour every French moderate’s nightmare: a second-round run-off between Jordan Bardella of the Far Right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Far Left.
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I understand the argument. Bardella (or just possibly Le Pen) is certain to top the first-round poll with around 30 percent of the vote. The multiplication of other candidates could reduce the threshold for second place to 17-20 percent and hand a spot in the two-candidate run-off to Mélenchon (now polling at around 16 percent). The Far Right would then be guaranteed to win the presidency.
I think that is plausible but maybe misleading – for several reasons.
First, we are NOT going to have 40 or even 30 official candidates in Round One next April. You need 500 signatures of mayors or other elected officials to run. Even Marine Le Pen struggled to find enough autographs last time.
Secondly, the real race is likely to narrow to a handful of candidates in the final weeks – four at most. It usually does.
Thirdly, there is a “stop-Mélenchon” mood growing in the centre-left and in the centre. In the past two elections, moderate lefties and other floater-voters have switched to Mélenchon in the final days to avoid having to choose in Round Two between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. This time, I predict, many of those moderate or undecided voters will be desperate to avoid a choice in the run-off between Mélenchon and Bardella.
They will concentrate behind a) the most plausible candidate of the centre-left or b) the leading candidate of the centre, either Edouard Philippe or Gabriel Attal.
That begs the question: will there be a plausible candidate of the moderate left? Within the Parti Socialiste and its allies, the proliferation of candidates IS alarming.
I count six “moderate left” hopefuls, either declared (Raphaël Glucksmann, Karim Bouamrane and Jérôme Guedj) or still-thinking-about-it (Olivier Faure, François Hollande and Bernard Cazeneuve).
There are also several possible/likely candidates of the not-so-moderate but anti-Mélenchon Left: François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain, Marine Tondelier (of the Greens) and Fabien Roussel of the Communist Party.
Discussion of a primary to select one moderate Left champion seems to have run into the sand. It will be left to the opinion polls to decide whether one of these ten will separate herself or himself from the pack.
The Euro MP Raphaël Glucksmann is threatening to do so. That may not last.
In the centre and centre-right, there is also what amounts to an “opinion poll primary” between two former Macron-era prime ministers, Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal and the Gaullist leader, Bruno Retailleau. Philippe and Attal have agreed that whichever of the two is weaker in the New Year will stand aside. Retailleau is determined to keep the Gaullist Les Républicains alive and in the race until Round One.
Leaving the decision to the opinion polls is dangerous – even some of France’s leading pollsters say so. The polls are accurate but ephemeral. Their bubbles can burst. They cannot build and guarantee popular support in the way that strong political parties can or could in the past.
In France in 2026 there are no longer any strong political movements except the Rassemblement National on the populist, anti-European right and La France Insoumise on the populist, anti-capitalist left.
In these circumstances, unofficial “opinion poll primaries” of the centre and centre-left are unsatisfactory but unavoidable. They are preferable to decisions made by weak party structures or even by internal party primaries.
Contenders who emerge from the crucible of the opinion polls cannot be accused of being imposed by “les élites”. They will have a certain credibility – so long as they DO emerge. As things stand, no one – not Philippe, not Attal, not Glucksmann – is building much momentum.
An abundance of moderate candidates ten months before Round One is not necessarily a bad thing. If they are still jostling for attention by the New Year, the country will genuinely be dans la merde.
