Marine Le Pen Leads Every Published 2027 French Election Poll, Ankle Tag and All

Marine Le Pen is polling at levels no far-right candidate has hit in modern French history, and the country's fractured opposition doesn't have an obvious answer.

A survey by the pollster Elabe found Le Pen taking 34 to 35.5 percent of first-round votes depending on which candidates end up running, according to Breitbart. A separate Toluna Harris Interactive poll conducted for French broadcasters RTL and M6 among 1,764 registered voters on August 18-19, with a margin of error between 1.4 and 3.1 points, put her even higher: 35 to 38 percent across every scenario tested. That poll, reported by Middle East Eye, Brussels Signal and other outlets, showed Le Pen running at least 16 points ahead of her nearest rival.

Both polls agree on the shape of the second round. The Toluna Harris survey has Le Pen beating hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon 68 percent to 32 percent in a head-to-head runoff. Elabe found a nearly identical result, 69.5 to 30.5 percent. Her toughest opponent in either poll is former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who Elabe still has losing by five points, 52.5 to 47.5 percent.

The center and left are split into pieces

France's presidential race uses a two-round system: if no first-round candidate clears 50 percent, the top two advance to a runoff, and every other party is locked out. That structure means a divided field can hand the runoff to a candidate with well under 40 percent support in round one, which is exactly the dynamic worrying Le Pen's opponents.

On the center-right and centrist side, two former Macron prime ministers, Philippe and Gabriel Attal, are competing for the same voters. Elabe found Attal's support sliding to 12 to 12.5 percent, which Breitbart argues could split the centrist vote and clear a path for Mélenchon to reach the second round instead of Philippe.

On the left, Mélenchon has surged. The Brussels Signal reported his support climbing from 12 percent in April to 16-17 percent in the Toluna Harris poll, enough to put him ahead of Philippe in three of five polling scenarios. The boost followed his La France Insoumise "rentrée politique" gathering in Châteauneuf-sur-Isère that closed August 23 with a rally organizers put at more than 10,000 people, where Mélenchon centered his platform on environmental policy and reiterated opposition to the French government's upcoming budget.

Raphaël Glucksmann, a Socialist-aligned MEP, is polling between 11.5 and 14 percent and is considered the favorite heading into a "united left" primary scheduled for October 11, according to Middle East Eye. But LFI and two other left-wing parties are opposing that primary outright, and The Guardian's editorial board noted that senior Socialist figures, including former President François Hollande, are rumored to be weighing their own late entries. Without the kind of left-wide unity that produced 2024's New Popular Front alliance, Le Pen's path to the Élysée gets considerably easier.

The legal cloud that hasn't gone away

Le Pen was convicted last year of embezzling roughly €4.5 million in European Parliament funds, along with 20 members of her party, and was initially sentenced to four years along with a five-year ban from holding office, according to Middle East Eye. That ban would have knocked her out of the 2027 race entirely.

On July 7, 2026, a Paris appeal court upheld the conviction but reduced the sentence, clearing her to run. She must now serve one year under house arrest with an electronic ankle tag. Le Pen has said she'll appeal to the Cour de Cassation, France's highest criminal appeals court, in a bid to campaign without the monitoring device. Whether that appeal is heard and resolved before ballots are cast next April remains an open question.

Supporters of Le Pen point out that the conviction followed decades in which she and her party were treated as pariahs by the Paris political establishment, and Breitbart's coverage frames her polling dominance as proof that French voters are rejecting that establishment consensus on immigration. Critics counter that the conviction was upheld on appeal, not overturned, and that the National Rally's roots trace back to a party long marked by antisemitic scandals under her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, a history Middle East Eye notes is why Israel has maintained a boycott policy toward European far-right parties with similar pasts. Both facts are true and don't resolve each other. Voters will settle it at the ballot box.

France's first round is scheduled for April 18, 2027, with a runoff on May 2 if needed. Between now and then: the Cour de Cassation ruling on Le Pen's ankle tag, the October 11 left-wing primary that LFI is boycotting, and eight more months in which, per both major polls released this month, no single rival has come close to consolidating the roughly 60 to 65 percent of the electorate that currently says it won't vote for her.