French Presidential Election

Multiple opinion surveys project Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon advancing to the second round of France's presidential election, scheduled for April 2027, with Le Pen holding a commanding lead in head-to-head matchups.

Le Pen would capture 35 to 38 percent of the first-round vote, while Mélenchon has risen to between 16 and 17 percent, up from 12 percent in April. A Toluna Harris Interactive poll found Le Pen holds at least a 16-point advantage over her nearest rival in every scenario. In a runoff, she would defeat Mélenchon with roughly 64 to 68 percent of the vote. When centrist candidates fragment the field — including Édouard Philippe at 14 percent and Raphaël Glucksmann, who formally declared his candidacy on Sunday, at 10 percent — Mélenchon and Philippe tie for second at 17 percent if Gabriel Attal does not run.

The prospect of a Le Pen–Mélenchon final has drawn alarm across the political spectrum. Édouard Philippe called the risk real and serious, while government spokesperson Maud Bregeon acknowledged the likelihood has grown. Mélenchon, meanwhile, has threatened a no-confidence motion against Sébastien Lecornu's government if its 2027 budget plan proceeds unchanged.

French television anchor Léa Salamé announced her immediate withdrawal from presenting France 2's flagship 8 p.m. newscast on Monday, following the presidential candidacy of her partner Raphaël Glucksmann. Salamé confirmed the decision on Instagram, saying she would step aside for the duration of the campaign.

Glucksmann formalised his candidacy on Sunday evening, entering a Socialist Party primary ahead of the 2027 election. Jean-Baptiste Marteau will take over the evening bulletin for the campaign's duration, while Salamé retains her weekly Saturday talk show, returning in September without political guests.

Salamé had signalled her intention to step back as early as June 2025 should her partner run. The first major campaign debate is scheduled for August 27 at a business conference in Paris.

French centre-left politician Raphaël Glucksmann has formally declared his candidacy for the 2027 French presidential election, confirming his intention to contest the Socialist Party primary this autumn.

Glucksmann, the 46-year-old leader of the centre-left Place Publique party and a member of the European Parliament, announced his bid on TF1's evening news bulletin. He stated that he would never form an alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed movement should he win the primary. His candidacy will require his partner, journalist Léa Salamé, to step down from anchoring France 2's flagship news programme to avoid conflicts of interest.

Glucksmann enters a race in which Marine Le Pen currently leads first-round polling, with Mélenchon and Édouard Philippe already declared. Opinion polls credit Glucksmann with roughly 10–12% of voting intentions, while he secured 13.8% in the last European elections. The first round is scheduled for April 18, with President Emmanuel Macron ineligible to seek another term.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon opened his presidential campaign on Sunday, proposing a "conscription écologique" and vowing to censor the government's 2027 budget in a speech before 10,000 supporters in Châteauneuf-sur-Isère, near Valence.

The La France Insoumise leader, who turned 75 on Wednesday, also promised to force large fortunes and multinationals to pay taxes, back a European-style superprofits levy, and ask the European Central Bank to freeze state debts from the pandemic era. He called for transforming administrative regions into "écorégions" based on river watersheds. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned lawmakers against delaying the 2027 budget for electoral reasons, calling it "the choice of disorder."

The speech kicks off a busy political rentrée across France, with party summer universities and rallies scheduled through September, including a Medef debate on Thursday featuring seven declared or prospective presidential candidates.

French presidential candidate Édouard Philippe has proposed establishing a detention and return centre in East Africa to process irregular migrants overwhelming the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, placing immigration at the centre of his 2027 campaign during a two-day visit to the archipelago.

The former prime minister, who served under Emmanuel Macron from 2017 to 2020, plans to suspend asylum applications, birthright citizenship, and family reunification in Mayotte for the full five-year presidential term if elected. He also called for a broader moratorium on immigration pathways, including family immigration. Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon dismissed the proposals as "aberrant, ridiculous, and provocative", prompting Philippe to invite him to witness the crisis firsthand.

Mayotte, a French department of roughly 323,000 people, is about half foreign nationals, mainly from Comoros, with additional asylum seekers from the Great Lakes region. A 2025 law already tightened birthright citizenship rules on the island.