Poll: Le Pen Leads All French Presidential Race Scenarios
If the survey results hold, France faces a realistic prospect of its first far-right president since the Fifth Republic's founding, with implications for EU cohesion and NATO policy.
Marine Le Pen, candidate of the Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, leads the French presidential race in every first- and second-round scenario tested in a recent poll, according to El Nacional VE. The survey shows Le Pen obtaining between 34 percent and 35.5 percent of the vote in first-round projections.
The poll tested four separate second-round matchups. Le Pen was shown defeating former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, former Education Minister Gabriel Attal, Socialist-aligned candidate Raphael Glucksmann, and left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon in all four head-to-head scenarios analyzed, according to the same El Nacional VE report.
The French presidential election operates under a two-round system established by the constitution of the Fifth Republic, adopted in 1958. If no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff held two weeks later. Le Pen has reached the second round twice before: in 2017, when she lost to Emmanuel Macron by 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent, and in 2022, when she lost to Macron again by 58.5 percent to 41.5 percent, according to the French Interior Ministry's official results.
The 2027 French presidential election is the next scheduled contest, as Macron is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term under Article 6 of the French constitution. The absence of an incumbent seeking re-election means the centrist political space that Macron consolidated in 2017 and 2022 is contested among multiple candidates, which the poll results suggest is splitting the anti-Rassemblement National vote.
Philippe served as Prime Minister under Macron from 2017 to 2020 and has since led the center-right party Horizons. Attal served as Prime Minister from January to September 2024 and leads the Renaissance party's younger generation of candidates. Glucksmann is the candidate associated with the Parti Socialiste, while Melenchon leads La France Insoumise, the left-wing bloc. Their collective presence in the field means the non-far-right vote is divided across at least four major figures, according to publicly available French political reporting.
Le Pen's ability to reach the second round in both 2017 and 2022 established Rassemblement National as a durable force in French presidential politics rather than a single-cycle protest movement. The party also made significant gains in the 2022 and 2024 legislative elections, increasing its representation in the National Assembly substantially, according to the French Interior Ministry's published legislative results.
A Le Pen presidency would carry direct consequences for European Union institutional dynamics. Rassemblement National's platform has historically included skepticism toward EU fiscal rules, opposition to further European integration, and a stated preference for renegotiating France's relationship with NATO command structures, positions Le Pen has moderated in public statements in recent years but has not fully retracted, according to the party's published platforms.
France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a nuclear-armed state. Its foreign and defense policy choices carry weight within NATO, where France contributes the alliance's second-largest European military force by defense expenditure, according to NATO's 2025 annual report on member contributions.
The poll's methodology, including the sample size, the polling organization's name, the margin of error, and the exact dates of data collection, was not specified in the available source material. Those details would be necessary to assess the statistical confidence of the reported figures.
No major French news organization or official French polling body has been cited as the originating source for this survey in the available material. Verification of the specific polling firm's track record and methodology would clarify the weight this survey should carry relative to other published French presidential polling.