Le Pen holds 33 to 36 percent in 2027 first-round tests as Melenchon reaches most run-offs

Marine Le Pen remains in front of the 2027 French presidential field. A Toluna Harris Interactive survey conducted on 8-10 September and published on Monday gives her 33 to 36 percent in the first round, depending on who else stands. Jean-Luc Melenchon, candidate of La France Insoumise, reaches a second-round pairing with her in at least three of five scenarios and ties for second in a fourth. Le Pen beats him easily in those tests. An August wave of the same poll put a Le Pen-Melenchon run-off at 68 to 32.

A separate Ipsos-BVA survey for Le Monde, Cevipof, Fondation Jean-Jaures and Institut Montaigne, built on more than 13,000 interviews, puts Le Pen at 33 to 35 percent. Melenchon makes the run-off in four of six scenarios, with 15.5 to 17 percent. Gabriel Attal, the Renaissance name in the test, reaches the second round in none of them.

Edouard Philippe, Macron's former prime minister, is the only candidate from the centre-right who comes out ahead of Melenchon in any Harris scenario, and he does so in only one, tying in another. In the Ipsos-BVA set, when Philippe is the single candidate of the central bloc, he is at 17.5 percent, in front of Melenchon at 15.5 percent and Raphael Glucksmann at 12.5 percent, with Le Pen at 33.5 percent in that line-up.

Macron cannot stand again. The polls are therefore a map of the post-Macron first round, not a comment on his current term. They show a collapsed centre and two poles that already know how to mobilise. Le Pen has now led this sequence of tests for months. Melenchon, who is 75 and has fought three presidential campaigns without reaching the run-off, is closer to that threshold than at any point in those earlier races.

The Radio France strike over a Valeurs Actuelles editorial is a small echo of the same split. Public broadcasters, magazines and parties are already behaving as if the 2027 campaign has opened. These figures will move. They are not a result. They are the reason party negotiations on the centre and the left are happening now rather than next spring.

Two caveats sit in the fine print. Harris varies the field. A different conservative or a unified left name would change second place. Ipsos-BVA is large but still a snapshot. French presidential elections have a history of late withdrawals and tactical voting in the last two weeks. What the two pollsters agree on is the first-round floor under Le Pen, in the low-to-mid 30s, and the failure of the Macron-era centre to produce a candidate who clears Melenchon in a full field.

For now the second-round arithmetic that matters is the one Harris already ran: Le Pen against Melenchon, and a wide gap. Philippe's one winning first-round test is the only published path that avoids that pairing. He still has to get there.