Yes, Mélenchon Really Will Win the Presidential Elections Next Year

Originally published on Hors Series 

This article was written before a recent parliamentary commission of inquiry in which Jean-Luc Mélenchon was quizzed on alleged ‘Islamist entryism’. It was a hearing in which — even his opponents admitted — Mélenchon gave another masterful performance. This article examines the quite plausible scenario in which the France Insoumise candidate not only makes it to the second round of the 2027 presidential election but is elected as France’s next president. True, establishment pundits are already predicting that Mélenchon will be defeated by the Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella. Yet, recent electoral data, the recomposition of France’s political landscape, and the country’s sociology, tell a rather different story. With the Macronist bloc in tatters, the ‘reasonable left’ lacking a popular base, the France Insoumise machine running like clockwork, and young people overwhelmingly on the Left, most indicators are turning in his direction. Far from the media dream-world and the opinion polls commissioned by the oligarchs whom he so threatens, this article makes a simple argument: Mélenchon winning is now the most likely scenario.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon poses an unusually serious threat to the established order. The super-rich, whose influence extends far beyond their businesses alone, see his fiscal and social proposals as a direct challenge to their interests. Billionaires like Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bolloré understand perfectly well that a government committed to fighting oligopolies, heavily taxing dividends and democratising the media would undermine the positions that they have inherited across some decades. The forces of law-and-order are also well-aware that Mélenchon is one of the few politicians who openly denounces police violence and calls for institutional mechanisms to prevent it and punish it. The defenders of productivism, and those who profit from ecocide, fear France Insoumise’s call for ecological planning, which is designed to break with climate impunity. Finally, supporters of Macronism — both the political elites who have benefited from his rule, and those who profit from the social destruction enacted in the name of “reasonableness” — see Mélenchon as the only opponent able to overturn the order which they have so patiently built.

Mélenchon Derangement Syndrome

For these reasons, Mélenchon has, over the last decade, been the target of systematic attempts to discredit him: sometimes presented as an authoritarian leader, sometimes as an agent of Vladimir Putin’s influence, sometimes as an unwitting antisemite. Today, Mélenchon is being attacked on a completely different front. The line of attack no longer targets his ideas, his programme, or even his strategy. Instead, it simply insists that, in the next presidential election, he is sure to be defeated by Jordan Bardella in the run-off.

This argument is less revealing of Mélenchon’s supposed weakness than of the emptiness of his rivals’ ideas. Incapable of articulating any substantive criticism, they are reduced to repeating the prophecies of polling firms owned by corporations in the hands of billionaires or individuals who have well-established ties to the far right. These pollsters were utterly wrong about the 2024 parliamentary elections — out of the 31 polls conducted, 31 had the Rassemblement National as the winner, ahead of the Nouveau Front Populaire. Afterward, none of them came up with the slightest apology. None of them mounted the slightest reform to their ‘methods’ (and the quotation marks surely are needed here, once we have read Hugo Touzet’s recent investigation, which reveals the gaping hole on which their data are built[1]). It would be naïve, and damaging, to grant that these pollsters have the authority to make forecasts about a duel between the radical left and the far right — an unprecedented situation.

Continuous but Underestimated Electoral Progress

Our hypothesis, here, is that a victory for Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the most likely scenario for 2027. To understand why that is, we should revisit France’s recent electoral dynamics. In three presidential campaigns, Mélenchon has made steady progress, in terms of both absolute vote numbers and his percentage share. From 11 percent in 2012, he rose to nearly 20 percent in 2017 and then 22 percent in 2022, missing the second round by a hair’s breadth: 420,000 votes. This upward trajectory is surely the result of external factors — the historic decline of the Socialist Party, the identity crisis afflicting the Communist Party, and the Greens’ lack of coherence. Yet it is also the product of extremely structured, strategic work. In 2017 and 2022, most voters on the Left — whether declaring themselves further to the Left than Mélenchon, or else to his Right — still voted for him. For large sections of the electorate, Mélenchon has become the rallying point, the central figure around whom the Left is re-shaping itself

This phenomenon, which has also been observed elsewhere in Europe, responds to a two-sided dynamic. On the one hand is the discrediting of governing parties, unable to offer a social solution to the economic crisis. On the other, the rise of new trade-union, feminist, environmentalist, popular and anti-racist movements, whose demands are now infusing the political agenda. France Insoumise has captured this energy and built a body of doctrine and political programme compatible with these expectations.

The Comeback Kid

Added to this structural development is a recurring phenomenon in Mélenchon’s campaigns: late surges in popularity. He himself has theorised this as the ‘shrewd tortoise’ strategy, or what football fans might call the remontada — the ‘comeback’. Historically, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has made most of his progress in the last six months before each election. The trend lines for 2017 and 2022 show increases of fifteen points over this period — something no other candidate has achieved. In the last month, he can gain almost ten points. The reasons are well-known: Mélenchon’s debating skills, his ability to create sharp contrasts during major televised events, the inventiveness and scale of his rallies, and the door-to-door canvassing by his many action groups, produce a cumulative dynamic that is unique in France. Already in 2017, each major debate brought him two to three points. In 2022, despite the increased competition coming from the Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel [which had backed Mélenchon in 2017], the trends were similar. His rallies were massive, spectacular tools of mobilisation, from the candidate appearing in hologram form to the use of smellat these events. It all replicated a perfectly calibrated mechanism.

These late surges can also be explained in terms of the sociology of Mélenchon’s electorate. Young people, the working classes and some-time abstainers only appear in the polls once they begin to take an interest in the debates. Their level of participation is low outside the election period proper. Opinion polls systematically under-represent them. As a result, the same polls overestimate the far right and underestimate the France Insoumise vote. It is thus unsurprising that Mélenchon is starting from a low base: his electorate is statistically invisible outside of election periods. This leads to an obvious analytical conclusion: the polls we see in December 2025 tell us nothing about the dynamics we will see during the presidential election campaign in March-April 2027.

Mélenchon is currently polling at 13 percent. At the same stage in the two previous presidential elections (that is, eighteen months before each of the 2017 and 2022 contests), he was polling at 8 percent — five points lower than now. If he follows the same upward curve over the next eighteen months as in 2017 and 2022, he will end up with around 26 percent in May 2027, a score that would mean a guaranteed place in the run-off.

At the same level (or in the same gutter) as misleading polls, it is worth remembering that false journalistic prophecies are less predictions based on facts than the expression of half-admitted desires. After the police raids on the France Insoumise headquarters in October 2018, the mainstream media repeated for two years that the politician’s career was definitively over. And yet, in the subsequent presidential election in 2022, he once again outclassed the rest of the Left. The same ‘death’ had been announced when, before the 2017 presidential election, he had raised the possibility of France leaving the EU.

The Fragmentation of the Macronist Bloc — A Historic Window of Opportunity

Another factor which current forecasts rarely analyse as they ought to do concerns the political conjuncture — and, more specifically, the advanced disintegration of the central bloc which has been built around Emmanuel Macron since 2017. This bloc, which had brought together part of the right, the centre and the managerialist wing of the Socialist Party, never constituted an ideologically unified force. It was based on an unlikely combination of factors: a temporary rejection of the traditional parties, economic elites’ support for an unabashed neoliberal project, and the extreme personalisation of power around a young, disruptive president whose symbolic capital was then intact. However, this capital has gone beyond just deteriorating. It has fallen to a record low in French history: as of November 2025, Macron enjoys the confidence of just 11 percent of the public. Contrary to the notion that this erosion of his support is simply the result of a decade in power, everything suggests that the current fragmentation is also the result of a strategic calculation by the outgoing president.

It has now been established, through a series of converging journalistic investigations, that Emmanuel Macron either directly or indirectly desired and encouraged the Rassemblement National’s victory in the 2024 parliamentary elections. The president called the elections in conditions which, even by the admission of some of his own closest associates, were less about clarifying the situation in parliament than about creating a political shock from which the Rassemblement National would emerge victorious. The calls made for candidates to withdraw, in certain strategic races; the presidential camp’s open passivity in the face of three-way contests unfavourable to progressives; and the contradictory instructions sent to local party branches, created a scenario in which the Rassemblement National would serve as a key link in Macron’s longer-term strategy. The most plausible hypothesis is now the following one: Macron does not want a natural heir to take over the leadership of his camp, whether that means a figure like Édouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal, Gérald Darmanin or François Bayrou. Macron knows that any candidate who is too strong or too independent and who becomes president is likely to close the door on his ever returning to the Élysée Palace. By encouraging the fragmentation and weakening of his own bloc, Macron is leaving open the possibility of a subsequent reshuffle (ahead of the 2032 contest) in which he would return as a last resort, faced with a far right that has already come to power but has run into gridlock.

In this context, the extreme centre is more fragmented than ever. Édouard Philippe may have a statesmanlike image but he has neither a structured party nor an activist base; Gabriel Attal is a prisoner of his identification with Macronism; Gérald Darmanin is counting on a reactionary electorate that already prefers the Rassemblement National; and François Bayrou has lost all credibility since his spell as prime minister. None of these contenders is in a position to represent a strong enough rallying point to force their rivals to withdraw and prevent the scattering of this camp. The central bloc will present itself disunited in 2027, with the various contenders ruining each other’s chances and making the presence of a Macronist candidate in the second round extremely unlikely. Added to this is the fact that any candidate from this camp will bear the burden of their predecessor, now rejected by his most loyal supporters and, most importantly, by the parts of the population that still made up his electoral base in 2017 and 2022. This absence of a credible and united centrist pole is one of the most decisive factors in the upcoming election: it is bound to open up space for a Mélenchon–Bardella (or Mélenchon–Le Pen) duel. 

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Inconsistent Rivals

On the Left, alternative candidates — Raphaël Glucksmann, Marine Tondelier, François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain — or the fossils that some still dream of resurrecting — François Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve, Ségolène Royal, Cécile Duflot — will enjoy a certain amount of visibility and media goodwill. The big media concerns, owned by economic forces hostile to France Insoumise, have every interest in creating a ‘reasonable left’ that is reassuring to the markets, harmless to the oligarchs, and yielding on European and geopolitical issues. This scenario is not new: we saw it in 2017 with Benoît Hamon, who was briefly touted as the embodiment of combative social democracy before his campaign collapsed; and in 2022, with Yannick Jadot and Christiane Taubira, whose media momentum never translated into popular support. The reasons are the same: these candidates lack a structured programme, a robust activist apparatus, ideological coherence and, above all, the social roots necessary to reach beyond an audience composed mainly of urban graduates. They lack the infrastructure necessary to run a presidential campaign over the long term: no significant territorial network, no well-developed body of ideas, no capacity for mobilisation either in the digital or real-life spaces. Even when they are artificially promoted by the mainstream media, these figures fail to convert their momentum into lasting success.

In contrast, Mélenchon can rely on a political machine that has, since 2016, acquired a strength without parallel elsewhere in the French political arena. La France Insoumise is no longer what was early on called a ‘gaseous’ movement, and nor is it the party lacking territorial roots that reluctantly took on the 2020 municipal elections. It is now a structured organisation with a large parliamentary group, teams of assistants experienced in legislative and comms work, an intellectual tool — the Institut La Boétie — capable of producing high-quality doctrinal and programmatic notes (a tool that others on the Left are trying to imitate), a network of trained cadres, a masterful online strategy, and impressive logistical capabilities. The development of the programme L’Avenir en commun, which has been in the works for ten years and enriched by regular consultations with experts, NGOs, associations and professionals, has resulted in a coherent document, recognised even by its opponents as the most comprehensive, best-costed and most serious of all French political offerings. This programmatic basis is designed to last; and, accompanied by some forty thematic booklets, it gives Mélenchon a headstart with which his competitors will find difficult to catch up.

In these conditions, Mélenchon’s qualification for the second round appears to be a very likely scenario. The unpopularity and fragmentation of the centre, the lack of popular support for the decaffeinated Left, and the know-how built up by his movement all offer the La France Insoumise leader a clear way forward. What, then, remains is the question of the second round itself.

An Unprecedented Run-Off — And Favourable Demographic Shifts

The pollsters claim that Bardella would crush Mélenchon. But these predictions have no scientific validity. The pollsters regularly get it wrong faced with simple elections, in familiar and oft-repeated scenarios. They will be even more helpless faced with a totally unprecedented duel: never in the history of the Fifth Republic has a radical left-wing candidate faced a far-right candidate in the second round. Electoral behaviour in such a situation is not governed by any pre-existing law.

There is a fear that Les Républicains’ [conservative-Gaullist] voters will swing massively towards the Rassemblement National: this is already the case today. We can anticipate that some of Macron’s leadership team will rally behind Bardella or call for action to ‘stop Mélenchon’, which amounts to the same thing. But centrist voters are less aligned with their elites than we think. Some of them remain committed to the rule of law, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary and individual freedoms. For these voters, despite the long list of criticisms they level at him, Mélenchon represents less of a threat than the rise to power of an openly illiberal party. As for the social-democratic or ultra-liberal (both culturally liberal and economically free-marketeer) electorate, those who identify with Glucksmann may detest Mélenchon. They may rail against him at family dinners and in after-work gatherings with colleagues. And, yet, in the voting booth, alone with themselves, faced with the risk of an authoritarian shift, they will behave rationally: they will vote for the Left, even if it is loud, radical, populist or even — as it is claimed — ‘Putinist’; they will do so out of prudence as much as out of self-interest.

Mélenchon will have to recalibrate his discourse, and perhaps also his programme, in order to win over Glucksmann’s and Macron’s orphaned voters in the second round. He has already begun this refocusing. The ‘sound and fury’ of 2010 has gradually subsided. Dialogue has been re-established with employers’ representatives, connections have been made with senior military officers, and low-key but very real forms of collaboration are underway with a battalion of senior civil servants. Mélenchon and his lieutenants are now banking on institutional seriousness, technical competence and state respectability, while retaining the ability to embody the radicalism driven by social movements and desired by their popular electorate. Reconciling these two registers is no easy task. Not everyone is skilled in the art of maintaining ambiguity. But this art surely has marked the France Insoumise leader’s career. This former activist for François Mitterrand, former Socialist senator and former minister under Lionel Jospin is also a tribune of the citizens’ revolution, a theorist of dégagisme [“kicking out the incumbents”], and now a crusader against police violence and against the genocide in Gaza. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s chameleonic ability — everyone sees in him what they want to see — is a considerable asset.

Finally, if Mélenchon’s victory today seems likelier than ever, this is also because France has not shifted to the Right, at least not to the extent that the Right would have us believe. The younger generations lean heavily to the Left, and the values of tolerance and equality are gaining ground even among the older segments of the population, whose votes will nevertheless go to Macron or [conservative François] Fillon. Mélenchon is the only candidate whose base is supported by the age groups that are growing in number. Time is on his side.

A Politically Right-Wing but Sociologically Left-Wing France

For several decades, France has been grappling with a paradox: the country votes mainly for the Right, but its population is increasingly left-wing in its thinking. If we limit ourselves to election results and the polls staged on television, we might believe that France is inexorably shifting to the Right. But, as soon as we take a step back from this myopic view to observe long-term changes in values — generation by generation, following dozens of surveys that have come one after another since the 1980s — the picture is reversed. Beneath the surface of an institutional and media landscape monopolised by the Right, we see a slow and powerful “left-wing shift from below”. Indeed, the attachment to equality, redistribution, social protection, tolerance, and civil liberties is — slowly but surely — progressing. This is the main lesson of the book that political scientist Vincent Tiberj has devoted to the myth of France’s right-wing turn.[2]

On the socio-economic level, the longitudinal data produced by my colleague show that a majority of French people remain consistently in favour of public services and social protection. If we construct an index of social preferences ranging from 0 (pure free-market ideas) to 100 (maximum egalitarianism), the average only shifted into the more free-marketeer half for a short period in the mid-1980s, at the time of the Mitterrand government’s austerity turn and the ideological counter-offensive against the brief social episode of early Mitterrandism. Since the early 2000s, the curve has risen sharply: redistributive preferences have strengthened, support for the welfare state has stabilised at a high level, and demand for regulation has increased after each financial or social crisis. In other words, despite forty years of neoliberal propaganda, the population has not internalised the dogmas that we face ‘too many taxes’, ‘too many civil servants’ and ‘too much of the state’. On average, the population remains closer to a social-democratic imaginary than to the bosses’ own favoured catechism.

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Expansion of the Progressive Domain

Culturally, the change is even more spectacular. Tiberj’s index of French people’s openness on issues of moral issues and civil liberties shows continuous progress since the late 1970s. What had back then seemed like minoritarian and even scandalous positions (gender equality, the rights of sexual minorities, the fight against antisemitism and racism) have become a normal outlook for a large majority. The most telling example regards homosexuality. In the early 1980s, less than one-third of those surveyed considered it an acceptable way of life; today, that proportion is close to 90 percent. Similarly, on immigration issues, a broad tolerance index shows a steady increase in the acceptance of foreigners and their descendants. The proportion of those who believe that ‘there are too many immigrants’ is declining, while an increasing proportion see immigration as a factor for cultural enrichment and consider the demand for equal rights legitimate. Far from the myth of a France obsessed with identity, a silent majority accepts diversity, rejects openly discriminatory policies, and is receptive to a discourse that calls for the structured welcoming of migrants, rather than the rhetoric of a besieged fortress. These findings are confirmed by the work of another renowned political scientist, Nonna Mayer.[3]

So, where does this oppressive impression of a France that has “turned to the right” come from? Firstly, it is owed to a shift to the Right “from above”. The small world of politicians, pundits, and big media firms is waging psychological warfare. Poll after poll, column after column, they hammer home the message that the camp in favour of equality is a minority, outdated, and out-of-touch with reality. The most anxiety-producing polls – on ‘cultural insecurity’, the ‘feeling of being overwhelmed by migration’, the supposed weariness with feminism or ‘wokeness’ – are commissioned, formatted and commented upon by those who have every interest in naturalising the idea of a France that has turned to the Right. This way of staging reality thus produces an optical illusion: a reactionary minority, with greater resources in terms of media coverage, shouts the loudest and appears to be in the majority, while a more open, more egalitarian, less vocal majority is relegated to the background. The far right and the extreme centre use this narrative to grant themselves democratic legitimacy; the soft left seizes on this to justify it giving up its supposed principles; and some radical activists take refuge in all this to explain their failures, without having to question their strategy.

Electoral Majority, Social Minority

The heart of the paradox lies in what political scientists call ‘differentiated abstention’. The results of elections do not reflect what society as a whole thinks, but what a socially privileged and generationally situated fraction thinks. The bourgeoisie and baby boomers are the most politicised social groups in the traditional sense of the term, i.e. they are the most consistent voters. Younger generations, who are more educated, more precarious, more tolerant and more egalitarian, are turning away from voting en masse, without necessarily disengaging from politics. They mobilise on social media, in public squares, in the protests on France’s roundabouts, and in feminist, environmentalist or anti-racist movements, but shun elections that they perceive as useless and/or disconnected from their concerns. How can we blame them when we see how the president is treating the 2024 election results, and when we remember what happened to the ‘no’ vote in the 2005 referendum [on the European Constitutional Treaty]? As a result, the electoral majority now represents only a social minority. The parties that dominate the political landscape are geared towards the fears and interests of this small segment of the population. The working classes, for their part, take refuge in intermittent or systematic abstention. This results in a situation where broadly left-wing values coexist with institutions locked in place by different shades of right-wing politics.

Against this paradoxical backdrop, the possibility of Mélenchon winning takes on a quite different significance. This would not be the improbable triumph of an “extreme” Left in a country that has swung massively to the Right, but the resolution of a paradox that has become untenable: that of a France that is sociologically left-wing but politically governed by the Right. By bringing together the youngest cohorts, the working classes who are still willing to vote, and those sectors attached to the welfare state and civil liberties, Mélenchon has understood a reality that the elites prefer not to see. If he won in 2027, this would be less of a rupture than a case of catching up with reality. For the first time in a long time, the values of the majority — equality, social protection, tolerance, democracy — would finally be reflected at the ballot box.

Converting the Victory

Here, I have mentioned an array of factors in Mélenchon’s favour. They include his steady progress over the last fifteen years; his unrivalled expertise in campaigns, debates and rallies; the systematic underestimation of his electorate by pollsters; the erosion of the current powers-that-be; the unpopularity and fragmentation of the central bloc; the lack of a credible alternative on the Left; Mélenchon’s organisational superiority; his chameleon-like abilities; favourable demographic dynamics; and the leftward shift ‘from below’ in today’s France. From all these factors, one conclusion is clear: Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s victory on 25 April 2027 is not only possible, it is the most plausible scenario.

I say this not out of militant spirit or out of wishful thinking but based on a calm analysis of the deeper trends affecting French society. The only certainties that Mélenchon’s opponents are holding to — premature polls, and media hype — are more a matter of panic than reason. The facts, however, paint a different picture. Mélenchon has already come close to victory before. The political, sociological and historical conditions are more aligned than ever for him to achieve it.

Translated by David Broder