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Brussels’
nightmare French election scenario risks coming true: Bardella vs. Mélenchon
The far
right and far left are on the march, while France’s imploding centrists are
busy fighting each other.
June 1,
2026 4:01 am CET
By Clea
Caulcutt
PARIS —
Brussels’ nightmare scenario is no longer looking far-fetched: a French
presidential election next year in which both candidates in the runoff hail
from the political extremes and hold a deeply skeptical outlook on the EU and
NATO.
Jordan
Bardella of the far-right National Rally — the nationalist, anti-immigration
party of Marine Le Pen — has long been the favorite to win the 2027 race, but
mainstream centrist parties have been hoping they can find a unifying
challenger to beat him in the second round.
That
prospect of stopping Bardella has hit a major potential hurdle, however, as
momentum builds behind the campaign of the firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader
of the far-left France Unbowed party. The latest polls suggest he now has a
strong chance of qualifying for the second-round showdown — depriving the race
of a centrist who could rally voters against the far right in the EU’s No. 2
economy.
Mélenchon
draws much of his support from working-class and immigrant communities, and his
critics have condemned him for antisemitism and a “brutalization” of politics.
While it would be a major coup for him to reach the second round in 2027, most
polls predict he would then lose to Bardella by a landslide.
It’s an
election landscape that is already bringing the French center out in a cold
sweat.
“A lot of
people believe that if they have to choose between the France Unbowed and the
National Rally … it would be a nightmare. And I agree,” said Édouard Philippe,
a conservative, who is seen as the leading mainstream candidate in the race for
the Élysée.
Gérald
Darmanin, justice minister under liberal President Emmanuel Macron, also warned
that Mélenchon was now set to be the main challenger to the far right. “You
have … to be wearing blinkers not to see it,” he said.
Shock
polls
Last
week, two polls shook France’s political class.
The
first, conducted by Odoxa, showed Mélenchon neck-and-neck in second place after
Bardella with the center-right former Prime Minister Philippe. The second poll,
from Toluna-Harris Interactive, showed Mélenchon qualifying for the run-off
vote against the far right if there were too many candidates running in center
ground, including Philippe and another of Macron’s former prime ministers,
Gabriel Attal.
There is
no sign yet, however, that the prospect of being eliminated from the
presidential race is proving to be the electroshock therapy the political
center needs to start uniting around one candidate rather than dividing the
field.
The
center-right Philippe is locked in an intense rivalry with Attal, and neither
shows any indication they want to throw in the towel.
“The
competition with Gabriel Attal could be fatal,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political
analyst with the Sciences Po institute.
“If Attal
doesn’t pull out until the autumn, it might sharpen the appetites of those on
the left, who will start thinking we really can make it to the runoff against
the far right,” he said.
Comeback
kid
For
Mélenchon, the national polls are a dramatic comeback after having been largely
written off in the wake of his confrontational municipal election campaign in
March. Opinion polls repeatedly show that the 74-year-old radical leftwinger is
one of the most disliked French politicians.
But
Mélenchon has earned the reluctant admiration of rivals for his energetic
campaign since he announced in May that he was running in next year’s
presidential election.
On June
7, far-left supporters are planning a show of force at a rally in Saint-Denis,
an impoverished suburb north of Paris that the France Unbowed won in the local
elections.
“It’s
hard not to admit that Mélenchon has probably understood better than anybody
what a modern presidential campaign looks like,” wrote Stanislas Rigault, a
former spokesperson for the far-right Reconquest party of Éric Zemmour.
The
potential showdown between Mélenchon and the far right’s Bardella (or perhaps
Marine Le Pen, should she be permitted to run) is something that both camps are
trying to play up.
In recent
years, Mélenchon has repeatedly insisted that in the end it will be an “us
against them” fight against the far right as the traditional center-right and
center-left parties unravel. At the other end of the spectrum, members of the
National Rally said Bardella is convinced he will face Mélenchon or a leftwing
candidate in the second round of the presidential election.
In
France, the president is elected in a two-round vote, with the two candidates
with the highest share of votes in the first round going through to a run-off.
Both Le
Pen and Mélenchon are leaning into the fight and have already started sparring
online over the economy and the far left’s concept of a “new France” that the
far right says pits a new generation, many with migrant backgrounds, against
people of longer French ancestry.
Left out
For the
moderate left, Mélenchon’s rise has triggered alarm bells, given he’s highly
unlikely to defeat the current favorites on the far right. Indeed, polls have
put support for Bardella at more than 70 percent in a second-round showdown
with Mélenchon. Last week’s Toluna-Harris Interactive poll showed Bardella
winning against Mélenchon with 68 percent of the vote.
“Mélenchon
wants to be the king of the cemetery on the left,” said a Socialist Party
official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal politics.”We really
need to pull our finger out,” he added.
But the
center left has never appeared further from marshalling its forces.
Last
month, the Socialist Party came close to imploding when a third of its
leadership left over tensions between the party president Olivier Faure and a
key ally Boris Vallaud.
One of
the strongest presidential hopefuls for the left, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann tried
to gather momentum last week, with a book launch and multiple interviews. But
he has been weakened by doubts over his talents on the campaign trail and the
leaking in POLITICO of an internal memo that suggested he should avoid
targeting poor voters.
According
to Cautrès, the political analyst, who has studied Mélenchon’s multiple
presidential campaigns, the far-left leader is divisive but can also appeal
more widely.
“Mélenchon
is liked on the left because he’s abrasive, he doesn’t make concessions to
capitalism, but there are other aspects to his personality, he is well-versed
in history and he can see the bigger picture,” said Cautrès.
“He’s
softening his image… he knows how to run a presidential campaign,” he said.
Philippe
challenged
But it’s
not just the moderate left that is worried about Mélenchon’s popularity surge.
The
center right is also under threat.
In the
2022 presidential election, Mélenchon won close to 22 percent of the vote in
the first round of voting. That could well prove a very competitive level. In
the latest Odoxa poll, Bardella was seen winning the first round on 32 percent,
while Philippe was on 17 percent and Mélenchon on 16 percent.
Philippe’s
problem is that much of his energy is spent fending off competition from Bruno
Retailleau, leader of the conservative Les Républicains party, and the
hyperactive centrist Attal, who last month announced he was running for the
presidential election.
Most
recently, the rivalry between Philippe and Attal focused — somewhat bizarrely —
on whether they would be prepared to stand up on a table to make a point and
which of them was more like former President Jacques Chirac.
“Things
are complicated in the political center because its leaders are too busy
attacking each another,” said a person close to Macron.
“I’ve
heard a lot about who they are … and not enough about the country or any new
ideas,” the person added.
Supporters
of Attal and Philippe have said the two men — both of whom are former premiers
under Macron — will ultimately reach an agreement and unite behind a single
candidate.
But there
are indications talks might not be quite so straightforward.
In a
briefing with the press on Thursday, an adviser to Attal floated the
possibility that he could stay in the race until the end if the Mélenchon
threat receded. “That would change the game,” said the adviser.
“We have
to work on the assumption that maybe one or the other won’t withdraw,” said an
ally of Philippe.
With just
under a year to go before the presidential election, there’s still time to
settle differences. But in the meantime, the far right and far left are
asserting their grip on the race.
Giorgio
Leali, Sarah Paillou and Klara Durand contributed reporting.
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