Glucksmann Wins French Left Primary
Raphaël Glucksmann has won the centre-left primary to become its candidate for France’s 2027 presidential election, taking 66.13 per cent of the vote in a first-round victory on Sunday that gives him an outright majority and establishes him as the main alternative on the left to hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Glucksmann, 46, is a member of the European Parliament and leads the Place Publique movement. He ran in the joint primary of the Socialist Party and Place Publique, and his margin was decisive enough that no second round was needed. Addressing party activists after the result, he said he stood for “a break with Macronism” and a break with Mélenchon’s “hegemony over the French left.” He described himself as the candidate who could defeat the far right, which he called “our long-standing enemy.”
He struck a unifying note in the same speech, saying the left would come together to stop “the Trumpists, the coup plotters, the xenophobes and the demagogues” from seizing control of the Republic.
The result is a setback for Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist Party, who has been open to alliances with Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party and finished with only 14.5 per cent. Glucksmann opposes any alliance with Mélenchon, so his win settles, at least for now, which strategy the mainstream left’s primary voters prefer.
Participation was modest by historical standards. More than 120,000 people voted, a fraction of the 2.8 million who took part in the Socialists’ 2011 primary, which was won by François Hollande, who went on to become president. Glucksmann’s standing rests on the 2024 European Parliament election, when he led the mainstream left to 14 per cent of French seats, according to the reporting.
On policy, Glucksmann has criticised some of President Emmanuel Macron’s pro-business measures. He shares Macron’s strongly pro-European and pro-Ukraine positions and presents himself as a committed defender of liberal democracy.
His immediate task is to unite a fractured left in a campaign that is increasingly being shaped by the far right. Opinion polls suggest he could reach a presidential run-off on 2 May but would lose there to Marine Le Pen, who is the frontrunner.
