A new poll out of France should not be viewed as some sudden political awakening. It is confirmation that the nationalist trend we have been watching throughout Europe for years is continuing and becoming stronger. The poll places Marine Le Pen comfortably ahead in the first round of the 2027 presidential election, with roughly 36% support, far beyond any of the establishment candidates currently positioned against her. More importantly, the polling indicates that National Rally is no longer merely collecting an angry protest vote. Le Pen is increasingly competitive with, and in several scenarios ahead of, mainstream candidates in the second round where the French establishment historically united to prevent her from reaching the Élysée Palace.
This is the continuation of a political trend, not the beginning of one. Brexit was part of it. Trump was part of it. Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy was part of it. The Freedom Party winning the largest share of the vote in Austria was part of it, as has been the extraordinary expansion of AfD in Germany. Reform UK has disrupted the old Conservative-Labour structure in Britain, while nationalist and sovereignty movements have advanced across the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, and elsewhere. Different countries have different grievances, but they are all reacting to the same fundamental problem: people are losing confidence in political establishments that transferred too much sovereignty away from the nation-state.
Le Pen fits directly into this trend because her opposition to Brussels has always been central to her political appeal. National Rally no longer advocates withdrawing France from the European Union or abandoning the euro, but Le Pen continues to argue that France must regain sovereignty from EU institutions. That is what terrifies the establishment far more than all the rhetoric about the “far right.” France is one of the pillars holding the European project together, and a French president willing to challenge the authority of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels would pose a threat to European centralization that Hungary or Slovakia simply cannot.
The EU was sold to Europeans as an economic union that would facilitate trade and prevent another European war. It has transformed itself into an enormous political bureaucracy regulating energy, agriculture, automobiles, immigration, environmental policy, trade, and increasingly defense and foreign affairs. The average French citizen cannot vote the European Commission out of office. Yet those bureaucrats can impose regulations that directly affect what car he drives, what his electricity costs, how farmers use their land, and what policies his national government is permitted to implement.
This is precisely why nationalism has continued gaining ground. The establishment insists that people voting for these parties have somehow become extremists, but perhaps they should look in the mirror. Trump did not create nationalism in America, Brexit did not create nationalism in Britain, and Le Pen did not create nationalism in France. These movements expanded because governments increasingly stopped representing the interests of the people who elected them.
France illustrates the trend perfectly. Le Pen received only 17.9% in the first round of the 2012 presidential election. She increased that to 21.3% in 2017 and then 23.2% in 2022. In the presidential runoff, she went from 33.9% against Macron in 2017 to 41.5% in 2022. Now she is polling around 36% before the first ballot is even cast in 2027. You do not need some complicated political theory to understand what is happening. The direction has been underway for more than a decade.
The establishment has nevertheless repeatedly attempted to contain nationalist parties rather than address why people are voting for them. Germany constructed its political “firewall” against AfD, whereby the traditional parties refuse cooperation regardless of how many Germans vote for it. Austria’s Freedom Party won the largest share of the vote in its 2024 parliamentary election yet initially found itself excluded while establishment parties attempted to construct a government without it. Millions of Europeans are effectively being told that they are free to vote for whomever they like, provided their vote does not actually change who governs.
Romania exposed how dangerous this mentality can become. Călin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round of the presidential election in 2024 before the Constitutional Court annulled the election amid allegations of campaign irregularities and Russian interference. Georgescu was then barred from participating when the election was rerun. There were legal arguments behind those decisions, but politically the result was extraordinary: the man who won the first election was not permitted to compete in the replacement election. That does not restore confidence in democracy. It destroys it.
Now look at Le Pen. Her conviction in the European Parliament assistants case initially included an immediately prohibition on seeking public office that threatened her participation in 2027. Her legal position subsequently changed through the appeals process, leaving her able to run, but France came remarkably close to having the eligibility of its leading opposition candidate determined by the judiciary rather than the electorate.
Then there is campaign financing. National Rally has repeatedly struggled to obtain loans from French banks despite representing millions of French citizens. Le Pen was forced to seek financing outside France in previous elections, and Jordan Bardella has again complained about the difficulty of securing French bank financing for 2027. Each institution can offer its own explanation, but voters are not blind when they see the same political movement confronting obstacles from the courts, banks, bureaucracy, media, and traditional parties simultaneously.
This is why the latest poll matters. The old strategy is losing its effectiveness. For decades, the French establishment relied upon the Republican Front, whereby parties that despised each other would nevertheless unite in the second round to prevent National Rally from winning. That worked spectacularly in 2002 when Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen with more than 82% of the vote. By 2017, Marine Le Pen had increased the family’s runoff vote to nearly 34%. Five years later she reached 41.5%, and now polling suggests the barrier that once made a National Rally presidency virtually impossible is continuing to erode.
The establishment should ask WHY instead of trying to devise another method to stop the candidate. People throughout Europe are rejecting governments that demand endless sacrifices for Brussels while ignoring problems at home. They have watched uncontrolled immigration transform communities, Net Zero policies drive up energy costs, sovereign debt expand, taxes increase, and billions flow into foreign wars while governments insist there is no money for their own citizens. Then the same political class lectures voters that choosing anyone who challenges this arrangement represents a threat to democracy.
That has been the mistake throughout Europe. The establishment treats nationalist politicians as the cause when they are merely the political manifestation of a much broader collapse in confidence. You can investigate a politician, construct a firewall around a party, deny financing, or prevent coalition participation, but none of those measures addresses why voters abandoned the establishment in the first place.
France could become the decisive test because a nationalist victory there would have consequences far beyond French domestic politics. Brussels can isolate smaller states when they resist EU policy, but it cannot treat France as some troublesome peripheral member. If France begins demanding the restoration of national sovereignty, challenging centralized immigration policy, opposing further EU federalization, and refusing to blindly follow Brussels on foreign affairs, the entire political balance of the European Union changes.
Nationalism has already returned as a major political force, and France is demonstrating that the trend is continuing. The establishment can attempt to stop individual politicians, but it cannot indefinitely stop millions of people from demanding the return of sovereignty to the nation-state.