PARIS — Two polar opposite personalities from France’s fractured left are fighting to emerge as the candidate to stop the dominant far right under Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella from winning the presidency in 2027.

It’s still about 17 months until an election that threatens to upend the European Union, but a very public battle is already raging between the old-school radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the polished pro-NATO more center-leaning Raphaël Glucksmann.

It’s a bruising clash, and several observers tracking the presidential race predict the depth of animosity between the two men could further split the left — sapping the possibility of victory in 2027 — rather than establishing a consensus candidate for the crucial second round of the race for the Elysée. Unless one manages to completely overshadow the other, the left will be locked in a civil war for the coming year.

“Past presidential elections have shown that two candidates can’t coexist on the left without causing trouble for each other,” said Erwan Lestrohan, research director at French polling institute Odoxa.

The two men could hardly be more different. Mélenchon is a 74-year-old hardliner who has run for president three times, nearly making the runoff in 2022 with a campaign calling for hiking the minimum wage, lowering the retirement age to 60 and pulling out of NATO.

Glucksmann, 46, is an MEP and staunch supporter of bolstering Europe’s military power. He is also open to billions of euros worth of spending cuts to bring France’s messy public finances into line and believes the country’s contentious pension system should be rebuilt.

Given those ideological fault lines, the tone of the contest has unsurprisingly descended into mudslinging. On his preferred communication outlet — his blog — Mélenchon has described Glucksmann as a “fanatic warmonger” and “the darling child of media vacuity.”

Punching back on social media and in interviews, Glucksmann has called Mélenchon “a phony patriot who prefers the Kremlin’s spin” and has framed their showdown as a struggle for “a vision of democracy,” accusing the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party of rose-tinted views of authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

Peril in the polls

Over recent weeks, poll after poll has suggested the far right could well have to face a leftist in a run-off in the spring of 2027.

“There’s a solid prospect of having a left-wing candidate make the second round,” Lestrohan said.

For Mélenchon or Glucksmann, reaching the run-off would be a huge moment. They would have a shot not only at taking the Elysée, but also at shaping the future of the French left — joining the likes of Jean Jaurès and François Mitterrand in the country’s pantheon of progressive icons.

More likely for now, however, is the prospect of becoming the first presidential candidate in modern French history to lose to the far right. Neither looks on course to win a second round against the National Rally’s Bardella — seen as a probable runner because of a ban on Le Pen.

A year and a half ahead of the vote, Glucksmann appears to be a stronger second-round candidate. According to an Odoxa poll released last week he is seen as losing by a margin of 42 percent to 58 percent to Bardella, while Mélenchon is seen as losing in a 26 percent to 74 percent landslide.

All prospective candidates from the center-right coalition currently in power look set to be wiped out in the first round, except for Édouard Philippe — President Emmanuel Macron’s first prime minister after his 2017 election — though his polling numbers have steadily declined over the past year.

Substance and strategy

With radically different views come radically different strategies.

Glucksmann is convinced the left can win by luring back moderates and former Socialists who ditched the party for Macron’s centrist movement in 2017. An Ipsos survey showed that Glucksmann managed to attract 17 percent of voters who had previously voted for Macron when he led a joint list with the center-left Socialist Party and finished a convincing third in the last European election in 2024.

Mélenchon, meanwhile, believes the decisive votes lie in working-class urban areas where turnout is low, but where those who do cast ballots have rallied behind him en masse over the last several electoral cycles.

True to his slow-and-steady philosophy — Mélenchon likes to call himself an “electoral turtle” and keeps figurines of the hard-shelled reptile in his office — he has increased his vote share in each Elysée run despite a cantankerous temper.

Both approaches have their merits and shortcomings.

 Mélenchon could be dragged down by his image as a divisive firebrand, Lestrohan said.

“As for Raphaël Glucksmann, his vulnerability stems more from the fact that he is still relatively unknown, and that we do not yet know how capable he is of campaigning, promoting ideas, and, above all, asserting himself in the face of opposition,” said Lestrohan.

That concern about Glucksmann has already begun to spread within the Socialist Party’s ranks. While the party backed the MEP in the last two European races, the idea of promoting a candidate from outside their party — Glucksmann leads his own political platform, Place Publique — has drawn skepticism from some Socialists.

After a weeks-long media absence, Glucksmann reemerged into the public eye last month when he faced off in a debate with far-right former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. Glucksmann’s performance was widely viewed as a disappointment — including by Glucksmann himself, who acknowledged he “could have done better.”

“There’s a scenario in which this all turns into a nightmare,” a Socialist adviser opposed to Glucksmann’s candidacy, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “Glucksmann will get crushed by a political beast like Mélenchon. But there’s no chance Mélenchon can come out ahead against Bardella.”

Us vs. Them

Indeed, although Mélenchon enjoys the support of a loyal core, he garners the highest share of negative opinions of any French politician — even more than Macron — and is vilified by opponents, who accuse him of pushing antisemitic tropes in the context of his pro-Palestinian rhetoric and of defending extremist views.

High-ranking members of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed have brushed off his weakness in recent polls, insisting their electorate only tends to mobilize later in campaigns and that the National Rally tends to lose support when the prospect of a far-right victory becomes concrete.

“It is impossible to predict what will happen in the second round. Voters never want to decide on scenarios that do not suit them,” said France Unbowed lawmaker and national coordinator Manuel Bompard.

“Only when the choice becomes mandatory” do actual voting intentions emerge, he added.

Bompard and other party leaders point to last summer’s snap general election in France, which the National Rally was expected to win before finishing an underwhelming third as voters mobilized across party lines to block its path.

Back in January 2012, when he launched his first presidential bid, Mélenchon predicted that “in the end, it’ll be between us and them,” with “them” being the far right.

Danièle Obono, a prominent France Unbowed lawmaker, said that prophecy still looked likely to come true.

“There’s an opposition between our left and the far right … it’s class warfare expressed through the ballot box. This is a moment when the people want a major shake-up that leaves space for either us [the hard left] or them [the far right],” Obono said.

Glucksmann’s troops beg to differ.

After the release of last week’s poll showing Bardella winning the presidential election, Aurélien Rousseau, a Place Publique lawmaker, took to X.

“We knew it, but now it’s clear politically: the RN can win the presidential election,” he said. “On the left, the line held by [Glucksmann] is currently the only one capable of leading the fight.”