French pollster Odoxa predicted for the first time that 30-year-old far-right leader Jordan Bardella would win the next presidential election, scheduled in 2027, no matter who his opponents would be.
The current president of far-right National Rally (RN) party, and heir to long-time leader Marine Le Pen, would garner more votes than anyone else if a presidential vote was held this week, Odoxa found surveying 1,000 people on November 19 and 20.
Depending on his opponents in a first round, he would get either 35% or 36% of the votes, Odoxa said, while he would win against all the other candidates making it to the second round.
“Unfortunately for Jordan Bardella and his supporters, and fortunately for everyone else, being the overwhelming favourite in a presidential election several months before it takes place is no guarantee of success,” Odoxa said in the report released with the poll results.
In the past, Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, both faced broad political alliances that defeated them three times in the second round of presidential elections.
Marine Le Pen, 57, was barred from seeking public office for five years after a court found her and some members of her party guilty in March of misappropriation of funds.
She has appealed the ruling.
Bardella, whose popularity rating has surpassed his mentor’s, is seen as the party’s natural candidate if her ban is upheld.
Odoxa tested Bardella against far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, moderate leftist Raphael Glucksmann and centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe.
The poll showed Bardella winning with 74% against far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round and with a narrower 53% against Philippe. The poll’s margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Earlier this month, another poll showed Bardella narrowly losing in a run-off against Philippe.
The weak performance of current President Emmanuel Macron’s heirs follows a steep fall of his popularity since his decision to call a general election in mid-2024 led to a hung parliament unable to form a working coalition.
The French lower house rejected parts of the 2026 budget bill on Saturday, leaving open whether the politically fragmented parliament, under pressure from investors to reduce a budget deficit, can strike a deal before the end of the year.
After the rejection of the income part of the budget – which deals with taxation – the bill now heads to the Senate, which is expected to strip out many amendments already added by the National Assembly.
Budget talks have become increasingly fraught since Macron lost his majority in last year’s snap elections, triggering broad political instability.
A battle over last year’s budget triggered a no-confidence vote that brought down Michel Barnier’s cabinet.
This year, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has pledged not to invoke special constitutional powers to ram the budget through, giving legislators unprecedented freedom to shape the budget – but also making the outcome highly uncertain.
A crucial factor will be whether the Socialists – a pivotal swing bloc – decide to reject or abstain on the two budget bills under discussion to lock in the suspension of an unpopular pension reform proposed by the government to assuage them.
Under the constitution, if parliament fails to act by early December, the government can impose the budget by decree.
France’s ongoing political instability risks deepening its fiscal crisis by delaying deficit-reduction measures, potentially triggering credit rating downgrades and higher borrowing costs that strain public services and economic growth, while for the EU it undermines the bloc’s credibility in enforcing fiscal discipline under the Stability and Growth Pact, heightens contagion fears across the eurozone’s second-largest economy, and diverts Brussels’ focus from external challenges like Ukraine’s reconstruction.