Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, won the French centre-left's presidential primary on Sunday, securing an outright majority in the first round with about 66% of the vote. Organisers announced that he took 79,613 of the 120,587 ballots cast, making him the candidate of the social-democratic left for the 2027 presidential election.
Glucksmann, 46, leads Place Publique, a pro-European centre-left movement, and has sat in the European Parliament since 2019. Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure came a distant second with roughly 14.5%, while the other three candidates, including former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, Jérôme Guedj and Emmanuel Maurel, each won less than 10%. The result is widely seen as a rebuke to Faure, who had been open to alliances with the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Faure accepted the outcome, saying the left would win the election by being united and that he would keep contributing as party leader.
In his victory speech, Glucksmann cast himself as the candidate of a break with both Macronism and what he called Mélenchon's hegemony over the left. He named the far right as the real adversary. "We shall unite to take up the fight and prevent the Trumpists, the Putinists, the xenophobes and the demagogues from seizing control of the Republic," he said. On X he wrote that a left faithful to its values "can unite, govern and win". While critical of some of President Emmanuel Macron's pro-business policies, he shares a pro-European, pro-Ukraine line and presents himself as a defender of liberal democracy.
The scale of his win comes with caveats. Turnout was far lower than in the Socialists' 2011 primary, when 2.8 million people voted and François Hollande emerged as the eventual president. Opinion polls cited by the sources put Glucksmann at around 10 to 12%, well behind far-right frontrunner Marine Le Pen, and also trailing centre-right former prime minister Édouard Philippe and Mélenchon. Some polls suggest he could reach a second-round run-off but lose to Le Pen. Critics say he is out of touch with ordinary voters. His list won about 14% in the 2024 European Parliament election.
Why it matters: the French left has been split between the social-democratic and hard-left camps, and Glucksmann's refusal to ally with Mélenchon makes unity a central challenge. The first round of the presidential election is scheduled for 18 April, with a run-off on 2 May. The last left-wing president was Hollande, who served from 2012 to 2017.