Paris is aflutter with talk of that poll – the one showing that Jordan Bardella would easily beat all potential rivals in the second round of 2027’s presidential election. The details behind those results demonstrate why conservative populism is gaining ground – and how its ultimate triumph still requires nuance and skill.
Bardella will be National Rally’s candidate should Marine LePen remain disqualified from running after the appeal of her recent conviction regarding misuse of public funds while an MEP. The Olaxe poll showed him easily beating Edouard Phillipe, the head of the centre-right Horizons party within Emmanuel Macron’s presidential majority, by a 53-47 margin. That was the best a non-RN candidate fared against Bardella.
The poll showed a clear pattern: The farther Left his opponent, the larger his margin. He would crush the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon by a 74-26 landslide, while he would still beat the centre-left Raphael Glucksmann by 58-42. Centrist former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal would fare better, but even he would still lose by twelve points, 56-44.
This might strike some observers as odd given the results of last year’s legislative elections. Last summer, all political forces from the far-left to the centre-right joined forces in the second round to prevent National Rally’s parliamentary candidates from getting majorities. That alliance of convenience succeeded, keeping RN and its allies to only 141 seats in the 577 National Assembly. Why wouldn’t this confederation just reform to keep its supposed mortal enemy out of the Elysée Palace?
Apparently the strains of governing together have demonstrated how little this disparate group shares aside from a distaste for RN. The poll shows that majorities of voters who would back Mélenchon or another far-left candidate in the first round would abstain in a second round against either Phillippe or Attal.
For many on the French far Left the choice between a Macronist and a conservative populist is no choice at all.
Nominating the centre-left Glucksmann does help to reduce far-left abstention. Only 49 per cent of Mélenchon supporters and 34 per cent of backers of other far-left candidates would abstain in a Glucksmann-Bardella matchup.
Glucksmann would lose, however, because 38 per cent of centrist voters would abstain, and 56 per cent of people backing the centre-right candidate of the Republicans, Bruno Retailleau, would prefer Bardella to the Socialist Glucksmann.
The chaos of the last year and a half – three Prime Ministers to date, with an uncertain fate awaiting Prime Minister Sébastian Lecornu’s 2026 budget – has demoralised the opponents of RN. Compared with the never-ending political warfare, a majority RN government looks less bad than it did eighteen months ago.
RN has gotten to this point in part because it has moderated its policies to appeal to former centre-right voters. Neither Bardella nor Le Pen talk about leaving the European Union or the euro anymore. Bardella is also viewed as less statist and more pro-business in his economics than Le Pen, stances which are easier for traditional conservatives to swallow.
That’s the path that all successful conservative populists take. Giorgia Meloni’s support has come mainly from Italians who backed Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia a decade ago, while Nigel Farage’s Reform Party mainly attracts former Conservative Party stalwarts.
Donald Trump has been a master at combining all conservative elements under his MAGA banner, offering immigration control, tariffs, and traditional cultural stances for the populists and tax cuts and deregulation for the traditionalists.
Conservative populists in other countries, especially the wealthier nations of Western Europe, need to act in a similar manner if they want to lead coalitions in power.
That fact points to a continuing challenge for many of the continent’s populist leaders. Too many fail to realise that it’s much easier to attract an angry minority than it is to gain enough strength to move the country in their direction.
The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders is a prime example of someone who may not be able to make the shift from outsider to national leader. It is true that the four-party coalition of which his Freedom Party was part included elements strongly opposed to key aspects of his agenda. But it’s also true that he neither used that fact to enhance his stature nor used the election he precipitated when he left the coalition to his advantage.
Wilders might find himself upstaged by leaders of other conservative populist parties. His party lost 11 seats in October’s election, with nearly 15 per cent of his 2023 voters shifting to one of two other conservative populist parties, JA21 and the Forum for Democracy. The most recent poll shows the Freedom Party down another 4 seats, with the Forum for Democracy gaining three of them. If either of those competitors can succeed in government where Wilders could not, conservative populist voters might just switch their allegiance to the party that can actually deliver.
Jordan Bardella looks like he could become the next French president for two reasons: The establishment cannot agree on a sustainable alternative course, and he appeals to centre-right voters who no longer see him and his party as a threat. Most conservative populists benefit from the first circumstance. It is up to them whether they can create the environment to gain from the second.
Trump is not in political trouble — not yet, anyway