Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen in Paris, on September 17, 2025. TOM NICHOLSON / REUTERS
Ahead of Marine Le Pen's appeals trial in her embezzlement case over fake parliamentary assistant jobs, in which she is under the threat of a ban on running in the 2027 presidential election, a new poll is likely to haunt the far-right leader and her close allies. The sample of French voters, and the Rassemblement National (RN) supporters among them in particular, appear to have accepted the idea that Le Pen's second-in-command, Jordan Bardella, would have a better chance of being elected. Even worse for Le Pen: Her party's supporters said the young Bardella would make a better president than his mentor, despite Le Pen's 15-year leadership of the party.
In the annual barometer conducted by Verian for Le Monde and the periodical L'Hémicycle, an online poll conducted from January 1 to 5 on a representative sample of 1,511 people, Le Pen's image seems to have deteriorated. On the one hand, the personal traits voters attribute to her (such as "honest" or "friendly and warm") were not undermined by her criminal conviction, though they were mainly expressed by RN supporters. However, the political traits attributed to her have clearly declined, after having improved over several previous years: Compared to the 2025 edition of the barometer, only a slim majority of respondents judged her capable of "making the right decisions" (55%, down 12 points) and of "understanding the French people's daily problems" (50%, down 6 points). Her ability to "rally people from beyond her base" dropped back to levels last seen during the 2022 presidential election (39%, down 11 points).
