Poll: Marine Le Pen widens her lead ahead of France's 2027 presidential runoff
A new Toluna Harris Interactive poll for RTL and M6 shows National Rally leader Marine Le Pen decisively beating both Édouard Philippe and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in a 2027 presidential runoff, while a separate Cluster17 poll for POLITICO points to a much tighter race for second place in the first round.
Le Pen ahead in every scenario
A new opinion poll shows National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen continuing to widen her lead in a hypothetical second round of France's 2027 presidential election, against both centrist candidate Édouard Philippe and left-wing La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The survey was carried out by Toluna Harris Interactive for broadcasters RTL and M6 and published on Monday, 28 September.
The poll's findings
According to the survey, Le Pen would beat Philippe in a runoff by 57% to 43%, while her margin against Mélenchon would be even larger — 69% to 31%. In the first round, Le Pen would take 35–36% of the vote across all five scenarios tested. Mélenchon would come second with 17–18%, ahead of Philippe (13–16%, depending on the scenario) and ahead of the social-democratic candidates Raphaël Glucksmann (10–11%) or François Hollande (7–8%), should the latter decide to run. If the centrist bloc were represented by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal instead, he would score only 12–13% — lower than Philippe. Les Républicains candidate Bruno Retailleau would take 8–10%, Reconquête's Éric Zemmour 5–6%, Greens candidate Marine Tondelier 3–5%, Communist Fabien Roussel 2–3%, and sovereigntist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 2%. The poll was conducted online from 22 to 24 September among 1,974 respondents, with a margin of error of 1 to 2.3 percentage points.
A different poll paints a different picture
However, another survey — the Cluster17 poll for POLITICO, reported by ladepeche.fr and published on Sunday, 27 September — shows a different picture: it puts Le Pen at 31% in the first round (lower than in the Toluna Harris poll), with Philippe and Mélenchon tied at 19% each in a tight contest for the second runoff spot. The same survey found that no political figure manages to convincingly "unite the French": Glucksmann and Philippe scored highest on this measure (3 out of 10), followed by Le Pen at 2.7. At the same time, Le Pen has the lowest rejection rate among voters (62%) and the strongest core support base, while Mélenchon and Tondelier are rejected by 73% and 81% of respondents respectively.
Editorial note: opinion polls reflect sentiment at the time they were conducted and are not predictions of the election outcome.
