French election poll puts Le Pen, Melenchon in runoff vote

A French election poll put Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon in next year’s runoff in all five tested scenarios. The survey showed centrist contenders trailing before the April and May vote.

The Toluna Harris Interactive survey, conducted from September 22 to 24 for French TV channel M6 and Luxembourg-based RTL, pointed to a contest that would exclude the leading centrist name tested. Its results were published on Monday and covered five first-round configurations.

Le Pen rises to 36%

Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, was placed at 35% to 36% in the first round, according to the poll. That compared with 33% in an earlier survey published on September 14, giving her a gain of two to three percentage points across the new scenarios.

Melenchon, who leads France Unbowed, was measured at 17% to 18% in the same first-round tests. Under France’s two-round presidential system, the top two first-round candidates advance to a runoff if no candidate wins an outright majority.

The figures would put both anti-establishment candidates ahead of Edouard Philippe, the leading centrist hopeful named in the poll. Philippe was placed at 13% to 16%, below Melenchon’s range and short of the second-round threshold in each scenario tested.

Centrist route narrows

The poll lands as voters face higher prices, a slow economy and geopolitical strains, according to the survey’s framing. Those conditions matter because presidential first rounds in France can punish fragmented governing camps when several candidates compete for overlapping voters.

The centrist weakness shown in the poll is not only a problem for Philippe. If voters around the political center split among several candidacies, the mechanism favors candidates with more consolidated first-round bases, including National Rally and France Unbowed.

Le Pen was also shown defeating both Melenchon and Philippe in the second round, according to the poll. The available figures therefore suggest that her advantage was not limited to the fragmented first-round field, though the result remains a survey reading rather than a vote.

The main uncertainty is whether the first-round ordering holds once campaign platforms, alliances and turnout assumptions become clearer. Polls taken months before a presidential vote can identify pressure points, but they cannot settle which voters actually participate in April and May.

Two paths into April

If the Toluna Harris Interactive ranges persist, the global macro channel would be policy uncertainty. Investors and foreign governments would have to assess competing programs on fiscal policy, European Union relations, energy and security, with France’s political direction carrying weight beyond its borders.

For National Rally, that path would make Le Pen the candidate to beat rather than only the first-round leader. For France’s wider party system, it would mark a second-round race shaped by the right and left edges rather than by the centrist lane that dominated recent presidential cycles.

If a centrist candidate instead consolidates support before the first round, the mechanism changes. A narrower field on the center could lift Philippe or another moderate contender toward Melenchon’s range, reducing the chance of a Le Pen-Melenchon runoff and easing pressure on mainstream parties.

The next test is whether later surveys repeat the same five-scenario pattern. Until then, the poll’s clearest signal is the size of Le Pen’s first-round base, the weakness of the tested centrist option and the risk that France’s runoff begins without a centrist candidate.