Just over six months ahead of the French presidential elections, The Forecasting Machine (TFM) places a 57% probability that a member of Rassemblement National (RN) will reach the Élysée in 2027. The remaining 43% corresponds to any other outcome: from a left-wing victory by Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the triumph of moderate candidates such as Édouard Philippe. Does this percentage guarantee Le Pen the presidency? Certainly not, but it is not a survey either: TFM answers whether a member of the RN will win the upcoming French presidential election. The question is worded this way to also include the possibility that Marine Le Pen may ultimately be unable to stand, since her candidacy remains conditioned by the judicial path of her case.
France has not yet closed the list of candidates and months remain for the campaign to finish shaping a highly fragmented political system. Even so, Marine Le Pen clearly appears in first place in the polls and it is far from clear who could accompany her to a possible runoff. According to French polling, the RN candidate leads the surveys clearly and exceeds her main opponents by more than ten points, but there is much more to analyze.
The RN Starts with an Advantage the Others Do Not Have
September polls outline a fairly stable structure. In the Cluster17 survey conducted on the 15th and 16th, Le Pen obtained 30.8% of the votes in one of the scenarios presented. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise) appeared at 19.1% and Édouard Philippe (Horizons) at 18.8%. Other polls place her higher: Toluna Harris, between 35% and 36%.
Differences between polls advise caution, although the underlying picture changes little: Le Pen has a base close to a third of the electorate and maintains a wide lead over her potential rivals. The greatest uncertainty for the RN appears afterward, in the second round.
“Le Pen has a base close to a third of the electorate and maintains a wide lead over her potential rivals”
A few years ago, the answer to who could challenge her was much clearer. The space built by Emmanuel Macron gathered enough support from the center, moderate left, and liberal right to become Le Pen’s principal rival. That space still exists, but it is far more dispersed and worn. Édouard Philippe, already a candidate, Gabriel Attal, Bruno Retailleau and other potential candidates compete for electorates that partially overlap, while the left has not resolved all its candidacies.
Conversely, the right-wing Le Pen movement arrives at this moment with a far more concentrated electorate. That difference helps explain how a force that remains well short of 50% in the first round can register a 57% likelihood of winning the presidency in the end.
Mélenchon Shifts the Second-Round Question
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s position is one of the most important variables to consider. Cluster17 places him between 19% and 20%, practically tied with Philippe in some scenarios. More recently, a Toluna Harris poll cited by Reuters places Le Pen and Mélenchon in the top two positions in the five analyzed candidate configurations.
A Le Pen–Mélenchon runoff would require testing to what extent the reflex of the so-called front républicain still holds. This electoral strategy, which acts as a safety measure, has allowed the consolidation of votes from very different political families to prevent a victory by the radical right. It worked decisively with Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 and resurfaced, albeit with narrower margins, in Emmanuel Macron’s two victories over Marine Le Pen. It also occurred in the last Assembly elections of 2024.
“This electoral strategy, which functions as a safety cordon, has allowed the concentration of votes from distinct political families to prevent a victory by the radical right”
The 2027 context is somewhat more complex. La France Insoumise also provokes substantial rejection among a portion of the French electorate. In this regard, Mélenchon would need to attract in a second round centrist and right-wing voters who today are quite distant from his project. We do not know how they would respond to a real election, but the doubt exists and weighs on any presidential calculation.
There could also be a different scenario, with Philippe or another figure from the center occupying the second round. The challenge for that bloc is to reach that stage.
The Center Still Seeks to Recompose
Former prime minister Édouard Philippe remains one of the figures with the most traction among potential successors to Macronism, though his results vary quite a bit across pollsters. Cluster17 places him near Mélenchon, while other September surveys have placed him notably lower. His task is to build his own candidacy after having served as Macron’s prime minister and to retain, at the same time, a substantial portion of the electorate that supported the current president.
On Tuesday he gave a glimpse of how he plans to approach it. Philippe proposes raising the retirement age to sixty-five and creating a mandatory private pension savings system. The reform allows him to establish a distinct profile, but it also plunges him into one of the debates that has generated the most political clashes in France in recent years.
The difficulty extends beyond the Horizons leader. The former presidential bloc today lacks a candidate capable of immediately rallying its voters. The traditional right is also seeking its space as it tries to compete with the RN on issues such as immigration, security, or identity.
A Party with Greater Institutional Presence
The RN’s advance is not limited to polls. Last weekend’s Senate elections allowed the party, for the first time, to have a group in the Senate alongside its allies. The traditional right and the center continue to dominate the upper house, so the result does not alter the balance. Their interest lies elsewhere: the French Senate is elected by grandes electeurs and depends heavily on municipal and territorial power, one of the areas where the RN had historically faced the most difficulties.
“The traditional right also seeks its space while trying to compete with the RN on issues such as immigration, security or identity”
Attention has also turned to a meeting between Bernard Fontana, CEO of EDF, Marine Le Pen, and Sarah Knafo. The CGT criticized the meeting and EDF responded that it maintains conversations with actors from different political sensitivities. Reuters notes that large French companies had traditionally kept greater distance from the RN and that some have started opening dialogue with its leaders in light of its electoral growth.
These kinds of signals are also part of the backdrop surrounding a presidential election. Voting intentions are fundamental, though a party’s position also depends on its territorial ground presence and on the relationships it builds with institutions and economic actors.
The Campaign Could Again Put the RN to the Test
The greater normalization of the party does not eliminate its vulnerabilities. This week, Mediapart attributed antisemitic messages from Jordan Bardella to the early days of his political career. The RN president rejects the accusations and has filed a defamation suit, and Marine Le Pen has publicly supported him. Yet, from POLITICO there is talk of some discontent between the party’s leader and her deputy.
This episode revives some of the party’s deepest traumas. For years, Le Pen has tried to distance the RN from the political legacy and rhetoric of Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father, cofounder of the party alongside former collaborators and other figures of the French far right. The strategy of dḯé diabolisatión (dedieabolisation) has accompanied the expansion of its electoral base and the reduction of the isolation that had traditionally surrounded the party. Yet, these new accusations against Bardella again place that transformation under scrutiny.
Something similar happened this month with the proposal to ban the Islamic veil in public spaces. The revival of one of the RN’s historic measures ended up signaling legal doubts and differences of emphasis between Le Pen and Bardella.
TFM’s 57% must be read in light of all this context. The model simultaneously maintains a 43% probability that the next French president will belong to any other formation. There is still a lot to resolve: whether Le Pen will finally be able to stand, who will manage to organize the center space, whether Mélenchon consolidates his position, how voters will respond to a concrete second round, and what impact the problems that may arise during the campaign will have.
TFM helps situate the starting point toward the Élysée. The RN approaches the 2027 race in a position very different from that of previous presidential elections: it leads the first round by a wide margin in the polls, and its opponents are still debating who should face it.
