Lost in thought president: Emmanuel Macron in the Élysée Palace.Image: keystone
So far and yet so close: the French presidential elections will take place in one year – but for the poll institutes the winner has already been decided.
May 23, 2026, 5:41 p.mMay 23, 2026, 5:41 p.m
Rien ne va plus. Nothing has been going on in French politics since Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament two years ago and established a minority government. Until the presidential election in May 2027 is decided, it will remain this way: France is politically at a standstill.
The head of state, around whom everything revolves institutionally in Paris, has to come to terms with the political status of the “lame duck” in the same Paris. He has “suspended” his central pension reform until the electionsin reality buried (he himself cannot stand for election a third time). He recently had to call off a second attempt at a law on euthanasia. He is currently struggling with a bottle deposit plan, which above all shows how low the great President of the Republic has sunk.
He remains in the diplomatic arena. In June, Macron plays host to the G7 meeting with Donald Trump in Evian. However, his employees are anxiously following the war-related rise in interest rates on ten-year bonds, which will soon reach four percent. The heavily indebted country actually has no money for this.
Macron has had his day
Other presidential advisers are already leaving the Élysée Palace. Meanwhile, the accredited journalists waste time with unsubstantiated rumors; The reporter from “Paris Match” claims in a book that the ominous slap that Brigitte Macron gave her husband in Vietnam when they left the plane was due to a “platonic” liaison between the head of state and an Iranian actress.
The French react in a way that couldn’t be more painful for Narcissus in the Élysée: with indifference. For them, the Macron era is over, although the president will remain in office for another year. It will be a year of emptiness, of political paralysis. And not just because the all-powerful head of state of the Fifth Republic is powerless today.
With their stable forecasts, survey institutes also give the impression that the presidential election in April and May 2027 is over. The winner is the extreme right, the antithesis of the egalitarian republic born of the revolution. It would be a political disaster, at least a breach of the dam: If the Lepenists move into the Élysée, Reform UK will also receive a boost in Great Britain, and the AfD in Germany.
The replacement solution has even more chances
The fact is: Marine Le Pen has received a very consistent 32 percent of support votes for two years, more than 10 percentage points ahead of her nearest rival. And if the founder of the Rassemblement National (RN) in July because of one embezzlement affair If she is declared unelectable, then her deputy Jordan Bardella is available – he even gets 34 percent of the vote.
Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen appearing before the press in September 2025.Image: keystone
The smart 30-year-old, who has no professional experience but impeccable manners, has already had to warn his followers during an election appearance: “Don’t think that the second round of voting is in the bag!”
The first one does – Bardella believes that himself. The only question that remains is who will take the other place in the final. Most likely Macron’s ex-prime minister Édouard Philippe. If he were to make it to the runoff, he would be more or less tied with Bardella. This week, however, the Paris financial prosecutor’s office has a Criminal proceedings against Philippe for favoritism and embezzlement opened. The nonchalant mayor of Le Havre is said to have committed a crime in a local internet project. Some political scientists are already predicting a crash in the polls, like the one suffered by the former center-right prime ministers Édouard Balladur in 1995 and Alain Juppé in 2016.
A popular uprising against an election decision?
As things stand, the other candidates would have no chance against Bardella. They are even more numerous. The bourgeois and the left seem incapable of a unified candidacy, without which success seems impossible from the outset. Bruno Retailleau has already advanced to the commoners, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left. The egocentric boss of the “Indomitable” is the only one who runs a truly professional election campaign and could advance to the second round of voting. There, however, the unpopular polarizers are met least chances credited: 26 percent votes for Mélenchon, 74 percent for Bardella.
Even the Mélenchonists therefore implicitly expect an RN victory. In any case, your suburban mayor Bally Bagayoko, the new star of the Indomitables, is holding out the prospect of a “popular uprising” in this eventuality. He had to tone down his statement because he is not good at questioning a democratic vote. But then he declaimed: “All of France’s important reforms or advances have come about through a popular uprising.” Asked to give an example, he cited the storming of the Bastille in 1789 or the yellow vest protests in 2018.
The third example would be the storming of the Élysée in 2027.