Who wants to succeed to Emmanuel Macron in 2027?

[Edouard]

Hello all ! I know a lot of you do not know about all the specifics of french politic so I decided to make a sum up of the french political scene for those who would get news without informations with all the candidates that could get to be known for 2027.

CONTEXT

2022 marked the definitive realignment of French politics, which had already been beginning to realign since 2017. In 2017 the Socialist Party and Les Républicains, which structured a right-left bipartisanship, collapsed in favour of the Macron-Le Pen duel, which pitted a kind of liberal centre against a strong, conservative right that was fuzzy on economic issues.

In 2022, a number of things have happened that have restructured the political field.

I'm going to summarise the changes from the far right to the far left as concisely as possible before moving on to the candidates for 2027.

RIght-Wing conservatism to far-right.

After her defeat in 2017, Marine le Pen decided to "normalise" her party by adopting a series of strong decisions to change the political line. Her eurosceptic party abandoned all plans to leave the euro and the European Union, which remained unclear, causing some people to leave. The party also set aside a large part of the social issues and, even if immigration was not abandoned, the issue became less important in Marine le Pen's message in favour of a focus on purchasing power and more general security, particularly identity.

Initially, this strategy did not pay off in the intermediate elections, but it triumphed in the presidential elections, where Marine le Pen gained 8 points in 5 years, and in the legislative elections, where her party went from 8 to 89 MPs. However, her message on society and immigration remains highly ambiguous. For example, the party voted in favour of criminalising conversion therapies and is clear only on identity, immigration and purchasing power, but remains vague on foreign policy, social issues and the economy.

It is the economic vagueness of Marine le Pen's party and a more measured discourse on immigration that has enabled Eric Zemmour and the Reconquête party to launch in October 2021. Unlike the Rassemblement National (Marine le Pen's party), Eric Zemmour's party is extremely clear. Very right-wing on immigration and society as well as economy. This positioning gives the party between 5 and 7% of voting intentions, but Marine le Pen refuses to make a pact with Eric Zemmour for different economic and personal reasons. Marine le Pen declined making any alliance with Zemmour and it payed off as his party lost all their seats including Zemmour who narrowly lost his constituency which became a Marine le Pen gain.

In the end, the Republicans remained trapped between these 3 parties. The liberals having an interesting offer in Macron and the conservatives having an interesting offer in Zemmour. The party suffered as a result, even though it managed to retain around sixty MPs. It still has to decide how to preserve its specific identity and relaunch itself.

 

The Center coalition

Much easier to explain. 

The centrist coalition has been solidified since 2017, with 4 parties from the right to the left.

Agir: A party of ex-Republicans who want to work with the presidential majority.

Horizons : The party created by former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, which has somewhat taken over from Agir and has become a new major centre-right party in the presidential coalition.

Renaissance: This is the presidential party. In fact, from October 2022 the party switched from En Marche, the citizens' movement, to a fully-fledged professional party with paid membership. The sign of the party's professionalisation and, above all, its change of name testifies to the fact that the party's vocation is to survive Emmanuel Macron's period in power.

MODEM: A more centre-left party led by François Bayrou, MODEM is a more localist and social democratic party. The oldest of the four parties, it has had a solid voter base for over 15 years and has 40 MPs in the National Assembly.

The Left-Wing coalition.

The left-wing coalition is the most recently formed of the 3 coalitions, but it has several dynamics.

4 parties are in an alliance formed around Jean Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise called the New Popular Economic and Social Union or also NUPES.

The Socialist Party: This is the party that ruled France from 2012 to 2017. It still has many mayors and regional and departmental representatives. But it is more a party of elected officials than of activists. Like Les Républicains, the party is stuck between alternatives on the left and right and is no longer able to unite a large panel of voters. The leader of the party, Olivier Faure, for his part, seems to be betting that following France Insoumise in NUPES, what divides his party. The party is rather social democratic but has made a fairly clear shift to the left while remaining the most moderate left-wing party on the economy.

Europe Ecology the Greens: Very Europeanist, very progressive, the party is however divided between a moderate current on productivity issues and a very radical de-escalating current. There is consensus in the party that France must abandon nuclear power, or at least for 75% of members.

La France Insoumise: As much as the Greens and the Socialists have common ground, France Insoumise clearly stands out with positions favorable to Russia, eurosceptic, and support for "strong" left-wing regimes like Maduro in Venezuela. France Insoumise is crossed by two currents, a current very focused on societal issues, particularly in the suburbs, and another more socialist current elected in more rural areas.

The French Communist Party: Curiously, the Communist Party seems to be the most "pro-growth" party and the most right-wing on French identity of the 4 NUPES parties. The party has estimated since 2022 that playing the side of productivity, by being the only pro-nuclear party in NUPES, and by claiming an attachment to the French culinary region among other things, helps it to re-distinguish itself among a whole part of the electorate left-wingers who don't really have any alternatives.

NUPES still holds but it is strongly divided on the European Union, the war in Ukraine, nuclear energy and even sometimes on certain questions of orders or identity. France Insoumise and the Communists are very opposed on several issues, the Greens and the Socialists have good mutual understanding but the question of Ukraine separates them from France Insoumise.

NOW the potential candidates for 2027.

Much easier to sum-up now that all informations are being said about parties.

Rassemblement National (Marine le Pen party)

Marine le Pen seems to be trying to run for the 4th time in 2027. Probably the last one but the one she could have the highest chances. By having a center-left economic program coupled with a right-wing conservative program on identity and society, Marine le Pen hopes to gain enough reports from left-wing economic voters who started reporting to her in the runoff of 2022 to close the gap by 2027. In my opinion she will never have enough to win but she adopted a tactic to look reasonnable since years and benefits from her parliamentary group to increase this impression, and so far her tactic works. According to french, she is the first alternative.

She has a successor however.

Jordan Bardella, only 27 years old. He's young, and does not seem to be very conservative on social issues. He successfully ran the party in the 2019 european election, he's the son of italian immigration in France and grew up in the french suburb, a territory where Jean Luc Mélenchon has high scores. He is from the parisian region too, and is seen by a lot as the natural successor of Marine le Pen. He is essentially clear on immigration and identity but not so much on others things, people don't know his economic beliefs for example.

Reconquête

Eric Zemmour is clearly candidate for 2027. His belief is that immigration issues will grow and he could with the time get more than his 7%. He is absolutely uncontested and unchallenged in his party. However, if anyone could replace him, it would be.

Marion Maréchal Le Pen the niece of Marine le Pen yes. Since long Marion Maréchal couldn't endorse her aunt economic and fiscal position. Marion Maréchal is a far-right politician in the US way, both to the economic and social spectrum. She is the second most important person in Zemmour party and is option B if Zemmour renounces to run in 2027.

LR (unknown)

Considering the situation, it is unknown if the party will have a candidate in 2027.

 

CENTER COALITION.

3 names are very talked about.

Edouard Philippe, former Les Républicains, former Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron who retired in 2020 to become mayor of his home town. He is well beloved by french as he is a humble person, he formerly went in the Socialist party before to join Les Républicains but as a moderate and served as MP untill 2017 where he joined Emmanuel Macron after the first round of the presidential election. He is a moderate who created his own party and he is by far the best candidate to defeat Marine le Pen. Sadly however he suffers from a sickness, not an important one as it does not cause pain or make him weaker but it made him lose all his hairs and its color in five little years. Five years ago he still had a beard and his eyebrowns and hairs and these were still colored. He opened up about it on french TV it's called hallopecia.

It didn't hurt his polling numbers at all and his new party Horizons is his platform to go. He always been a moderate on all issues and prooved it by abstaining on same sex mariage in 2013 while most of his party voted against.

However Renaissance, the original party of Macron has 2 serious candidates that could also want to come after the second term of president Emmanuel Macron.

Bruno le Maire, french minister of Finances. He is seen as a liberal in all forms. He is assumed as a finance reformer but he always been moderate or really liberal on society as he also abstained on same sex marriage in 2013 when socialists proposed it like Edouard Philippe. He is the most popular inside the party and remains quite a simple person who tries to communicate a lot on the economic reforms of the government particulary against inflation rates. He is seen as the most likely option in Renaissance but there is someone else that is seen as a serious candidate.

Gerald Darmanin, minister of the french interior. He is more the right-wing of the party. Clear on immigration, he even mocked Le Pen in an identity debate in 2021 saying that she was "too-soft" on secularism. He comes from Les Républicains like Edouard Philippe and Bruno le Maire but he was less of a moderate than them. He voted against same sex marriage in 2013 and apologized for it in 2023. On immigration and identity he has a very tough rethoric which plays well with the electorate and received good words from Nicolas Sarkozy whom he has been a long supporter. He also has previously been elected as a mayor and a LR MP prior to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017. It seems clear that he is the one of the 3 candidates of the presidential coalition that has the most opened up about his will to run in 2027 so far.

FRENCH LEFT.

Former Socialist Prime Minister for the last six months of François Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve is part of the former Socialists who want to rebuild a "left of government". He is considering to run as a candidate to reunite a french left around the center-left contrary to what it is currently.

COALITION OF THE NUPES.

I will go much easier. There are 2 Greens and 2 France Insoumise that are seen as potential big candidates. I will start with the 2 Greens then the 2 LFI.

Yanick Jadot, the Green european MP is considering running again in 2027. He scored 4,6% in 2022 and arrived close to Valérie Pécresse but didn't do enough to get beyond 5% due to tactical vote for Mélenchon. Jadot tries to be a broad green candidate, he tries to reach from moderate social democrates to anti-growth climate activists. He put a lot of personnal focus both on human-rights and environment all in the same time. He however is in a party that is opposed to nuclear energy and where the use of cars is more and more denounced.

Sandrine Rousseau is his main opponent. She represents the left-wing of Europe Ecologie les Verts and she scored 49% against him in the primary in 2021. She does believe that she had got more time she would have defeated him. She represents the assumed radicalism. She advocates to abolish a lot of things that are considered as toxic masculinity, she is a lot more radical on fighting pro-growth policies that pollute but on the other side she remains in coherence with her party on foreign policy, she particulary advocates like her whole party on supporting Ukraine to the end of the conflict. She is much closer to La France Insoumise for others reasons however.

And then we can close with the 2 main France Insoumise potential candidates.

Of course Jean Luc Mélenchon. Like Marine le Pen he tries to be president since 2012. A former socialist who created his own party then took over the left progressively with the unpopularity of François Hollande in government and the fall of the socialists in supports. Jean Luc Mélenchon has for himself to be a compromise between the social and economic wings of his party, however his behavior and tactic of the constant opposition somewhat in street movements has costed him a lot of approval from the french who are a lot polarized in favor or against him and sometimes more than Marine le Pen.

His main alternative is.

François Ruffin. LFI MP since 2017, he is seen as the kind of old socialist politician that tries to win over economic issues before social ones. He made himself a name by winning a rural constituency in a department dominated by the vote in favor of Marine le Pen party. He definitively belongs more to the economic socialist than social progressive wing of his party. He tries to push his party to adopt a softer approach to law and order and focus his efforts on painting Marine le Pen as a fake ally of social classes and tries to win back a lot of voters who are Le Pen voters but who remain left-wing on economic issues. This strategy costs him the opposition of several social progressives in the party even if he is not a social conservative at all obviously.

Here is so far the obvious options that appear for 2027, I hope it helped you !

 

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Edouard

[Fbarbarossa]

Ruffin to RufWIN

[Edouard]

I will eventually give 2 candidates that might surprise everyone above the ones already mentionned.

1 from the Left and 1 from the Right.

The one from the left is.

Ségolène Royale, former Socialist candidate from the 2007 presidential election who was defeated largely by Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of a region, former environment cabinet member during François Hollande's presidency.

Ségolène is a wild case, she considered herself out of the presidential race in 2015 and was having good words both for Macron and Mélenchon in 2017. She actually collaborated quite a while with Macron in his early years as she became ambassadress for the North and South Pole untill january 2020 where she was removed from her office. Since then she took a shift and aligned with the left and the growing NUPES. Right now Ségolène is playing a bold tactic to which everyone can make its own conclusions.

European elections approach and it seems that the NUPES who was born in may 2022 and ran together single candidates in legislative election in June 2022, depriving the president from having a majority in parliament is still not strong enough to form a single list of the left for the european elections in some months. The reason is that while Socialists and Greens have a possible common vision of europe (greens are federalists more or less proclaimed and Socialists are not all federalists but very pro european union and some are federalists), it is absolutely not the case of Mélenchon party which is the biggest eurosceptic party in France now that Le Pen has turned neutral on the EU and the euro.

Ukraine is also dividing a lot, Greens and Socialists but particulary the Verts being staunch supporters of Zelensky and Ukraine while Mélenchonist european MPs voting the most in favor of Russia sometimes even at odds with the european MPs that are part of Zemmour party (and so more than Le Pen MEPs).

Also communists are not for punishing industry while the rest of the left is more in favor of the advocates to end nuclear energy. So each party of the NUPES is considering running alone this european election which by the way is not depriving them from seats as the vote is proportionnal with a 5% thresholds, only communists barely get 5% while all others are near 10% or more. That's where Ségolène arrived, and offered herself as the unity candidate of the left for the european elections. Mélenchon endorsed it, but Greens, Communists and Socialists remain reluctent.

Why is Ségolène trying to prove herself as the unity candidate for the NUPES so the french left for the european election. Is it only for the european election? Or does she looks toward 2027 in the hope to repeat a potential paying gamble of uniting the left in the european election if she ever succeeds?

The other potential surprise is for Les Républicains.

David Lisnard, mayor of Cannes, president of the association of french mayors. He is trying to revive his party, Les Républicains around some key points that he defends. A clear position on security, a clear position on fiscal conservatism, and a clear position on localism, particulary on decentralization. He basically tries to revive his party around what should be its fundamentals and it's not know if such a gamble can pay off, but it's definitively someone that has a lot of networks all accross France, that is popular and who played outside of the box as he helped several presidential candidates to qualify for the presidential election without forcelly approving them including Eric Zemmour. He definitively has an interesting appeal as he gets his message through without getting caught in any scandal. Several see him as the person who could save the Republicans without alienating its ideology.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Edouard

[Rezi]

I don't know how France can have so many political parties and not a single one is good.

[Edouard]

I didn't believe I would have to mention a third potential surprise candidate for 2027 but here it is, for the coalition of the center to complete after mentionning one potential for the left and one potential for the right.

It's the current minister of french education, Gabriel Attal.

He comes from the Socialist party, but he served 5 years as spokesperson of the french government and in the budget, offices in which he earned good praises from the left and the right.

However it's his rocking start as minister of french education that earned him a lot of praises.

Early september : Gabriel Attal becomes minister of Education.

In the following days, he forbids the possibility to wear abbayas which are cultural/religious signs from the middle east in french schools. The ban is immediate, and surprisingly leads to very few movements of opposition from the ones who weared these.

The fear is that children wear abbayas as a way to go around the ban on visible religious signs in school as it is banned before university since 2004.

Some days later another child kills himself after being bullied in France as school bullying remains a very difficult problem. It is learned that the french academy administration of the place where this child was harassed had threatened the parents of the child because those parents had told before their child death to the director of the medium school that they would go to the police against his inaction, and in return the school administration had threatened the parents of the child of judicial lawsuit.

Gabriel Attal said that this threat on the parents of the child was a "shame" and opened an inquiry on the services of the education administration to make sure that school administration always be on the side of parents of harassed children and not on the side of the school director that covers up this kind of situation. Several days later 5 french policemen arrive in a class where a bully is known in his class for having harassing and issued even pro nazis death threats toward a teenager and arrest the school bully directly in front of everyone, placing handcuffs on him and leading him to the police office for interrogation and temporary detention of the day. The bully collapses into cries and immediately apologies, he is not put into jail but will have to serve community services and get an educator.

85% of french endorse the move, the french government fully assumes the move and Gabriel Attal himself says : There is no serenity without authority.

Yesterday the inquiry decided by Gabriel Attal led to reveal that 55 letters on 120 sent the previous year and made by the school administration in the concerned school district to parental families were wrongfully adressed as the administration was threatening parents of either harassed or sexually assaulted children while the 65 others letters were rightfully sent. The french minister insisted that it was time that "fear changes side".

Each of the 55 families threatened by the local school administration will receive a meeting with that said school administration. And from now, school districts will be evaluated also in regard to their action against school bullying.

In 3 weeks, and a poll from today shows that he became in a month of office the third most liked politician in France behind Edouard Philippe and Marine le Pen and in front of Jordan Bardella and Bruno le Maire who are respectively 4th and 5th most liked policians. He gained 11 points of popularity through his action.

29% consider Gabriel Attal as a good candidate for 2027, the leader remains Edouard Philippe with 50% considering him positively for 2027 but this rapid success definitively put Gabriel Attal as a what if? Identity is not important in France, but it is also considerable to note that he is the only homosexual politician in this list of what if.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Edouard