Marine Le Pen’s decision to enter the 2027 presidential race following a court ruling removing her ban on running has shaken up the race. Polls suggest she starts in a strong position to finally capture the post she has been running for since 2012. A week I recently spent in France, though, reminded me of the challenge she faces that historically has eluded her: Convincing the comfortable bourgeoisie to prefer her over a candidate from the Macronist camp in the second round.
It’s not surprising that Le Pen immediately launched her candidacy following the appellate court’s reduction of her sentence that permits her to run. With the rise of her young deputy, Jordan Bardella, she surely knew that 2027 would be her last chance to capture the Élysée Palace before Bardella replaced her as her party’s favourite. Bardella, knowing the future is his, graciously stepped aside in favour of Le Pen and is expected to serve as her prime minister should she win and their National Rally (RN) party wins subsequent parliamentary elections.
That decision, while expected, disappoints some recent converts to RN’s cause because Bardella is believed to be less wedded to state intervention in the economy than Le Pen. While Bardella and others within RN who share his views would still wield influence in the event the populist party takes power, Le Pen’s prestige and political skill as president would likely place limits on their ability to steer RN closer to the economic mainstream.
Steering closer to that, though, is likely to be essential to Le Pen’s chance at winning. She and RN have traditionally failed to win presidential and parliamentary elections in the second round in large part because traditional conservative voters reluctantly back their opponents, in part because they fear RN would pursue more statist economics. Moving RN back to a more traditionally hostile view of the market might cause these people, who increasingly seem willing to back RN in 2027, to reconsider.
That’s what the data from recent polls suggest. An Ifop poll taken immediately after Le Pen announced shows her ahead of the centre-right Macronist Édouard Philippe by a 54-46 margin. That represents a large swing from 2022, when she lost by a decisive 17-point margin in the second round to Emmanuel Macron.
Comparing the results by income level to results from Ifop’s last poll before the 2022 vote shows how much Le Pen depends on votes from France’s upper and upper-middle class voters. According to that poll, Le Pen lost to Macron by 56 points among the highest income group and by 14 points among the next highest. Ifop’s recent poll shows Le Pen leads by four points among those upper-middle income voters and has cut her margin of defeat among the wealthiest to a mere 14 points.
Le Pen has gained compared to 2022 with all income groups, but there’s a strict linear relationship between her gains and income. Her margin has increased by only 10 points among France’s poor and by 14 with the working class, but by 18 with upper-middle income voters and a whopping 42 points among the rich.
That could be a case that those voters now feel so hard up or unhappy that they want the type of radical change she and RN have always promised. It’s likelier, though, that these voters remain largely supportive of the existing structure but are comfortable with RN delivering significant, non-radical change.
Move back to the pre-Bardella economics and those voters might decide that the type of moderate change Philippe will endorse is preferable once again to the more dramatic action Le Pen proposes.
That’s the point my admittedly limited observations drew me to conclude as I drove through northwestern France. The first towns I passed through leaving Charles de Gaulle airport looked run down. Weeds frequently poked through pavements and roads, and buildings were unkempt or abandoned. These places were in the Eure department, and I was not surprised to learn that all the places I passed through were represented by RN deputies in the National Assembly.
I then entered the departments of Seine-Maritime and Calvados. Obvious decay was rare and most places looked, if not prosperous at least cosy and clean. Most shops were open and there was no hint of disorder. I didn’t see a single obvious Muslim immigrant throughout a week in that region, with many displays of French flags on homes and in city centres.
Perhaps not surprisingly, every Assembly district I passed through had been won in 2024 by a candidate from the so-called Republican Front. The Left triumphed in some of the larger cities, such as Rouen and Caen, but generally it was the centre-right Republicans or Macron’s Ensemble, including many members from Philippe’s own Horizons party.
Le Pen does not need to win these areas to triumph, but she cannot risk centre-right, bourgeois voters joining a Republican Front en masse as they did in 2024. If she makes herself the issue rather than prosecute the case against the failed elite consensus, then she dramatically increases the chance of that happening.
Le Pen and RN are on the cusp of taking power as more French voters decide they can be trusted with power. Unless she gets lucky and faces the extreme leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round, she will have to remain acceptable to French voters who are unhappy but have never before voted for her or RN. Keeping her eye on that person, the materially content French suburbanite with a nice Peugeot and a tidy house, rather than RN’s base support will be her path to the presidency.
