There are several reasons for this: A generalized mood of discontent with politics; the scrambling of the old left-right divide; the weakness of the incumbent president, who can neither run again nor readily influence the choice of his successor; as well as the global, economic and political uncertainties generated by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the choice of candidates is particularly uncertain this time around, as President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s center is hugely fragmented.<\/p>\n
Until last month, the competition to succeed Macron was limited to two of his former prime ministers: the leader of the center-right Horizons party, Edouard Philippe, and the leader of Macron\u2019s Renaissance party, Gabriel Attal. But now, both have fallen out with the president and are attempting to appeal to his socially progressive, pro-European, pro-business base, while simultaneously distancing themselves from an unpopular president with a patchy record.<\/p>\n
Polls indicate that Philippe is a clear early leader in this battle for the center, with 21 to 24 percent support in the first round of the election, while Attal\u2019s polling is around 14 to 15 percent. All the while, hard-line Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau\u2019s bid threatens to turn the \u201ccentral civil war\u201d into a three-way fight.<\/p>\n
As head of the much weakened ex-Gaullist center-right party Republicans, Retailleau seems certain to become his party\u2019s candidate, which sets up three of the four party leaders in the governing alliance as rivals to be Macron\u2019s successor \u2014 an inherently explosive situation.<\/p>\n
The French president has lost almost all domestic influence since his unsuccessful snap elections last year, and he has little leverage to influence this crucial race within a race. Moreover, both Philippe and Retailleau are unlikely to campaign to \u201csave Macronism\u201d but rather to bury it and restore something closer to the socially conservative, economically liberal and less enthusiastically European center right of former presidents Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are several reasons for this: A generalized mood of discontent with politics; the scrambling of the old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[1779,33184,33,28284,34,2000,299,1105,36,37,29101,38,53753,33181,42,44,31930],"class_list":{"0":"post-230878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-court-decisions","9":"tag-edouard-philippe","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-elections-in-europe","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-far-right","16":"tag-france","17":"tag-francois-bayrou","18":"tag-french-election-2027","19":"tag-french-politics","20":"tag-gabriel-attal","21":"tag-jean-luc-melenchon","22":"tag-jordan-bardella","23":"tag-marine-le-pen","24":"tag-raphael-glucksmann"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114781331996067016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}