French candidates race to claim the cost-of-living issue ahead of 2027 vote

With seven months to go before the presidential election in France, a wave of pessimism seems to be gripping voters.

Only 17 percent feel hopeful, according to a poll of 13,060 registered voters released on Sunday by Ipsos France. The vast majority – 91 percent – of respondents reported negative sentiments regarding the current state of affairs, citing emotions dominated by worry, uncertainty and anger. This year, 59 percent of voters specifically said they felt worried, compared to 38 percent in 2021.

“The direct consequences of these negative emotions, of this worry, is a much deeper desire for radical change than in 2022,” Ipsos director Brice Teinturier told French daily Le Monde in an interview on Monday. 

Voters increasingly want concrete action. And they want to see change in what arguably affects their daily lives the most – the cost of living. 

“What concerns voters most of all is the issue of purchasing power,” Teinturier explained. “It is economic and social issues, far more than immigration, that are of concern.” 

Poll puts France's Le Pen in lead as presidential campaign kicks off

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Breaking point

It is not the first time the cost of living has been a central concern for voters. It was a major issue ahead of both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections in France. But with the cost of necessities like housing, fuel and food continuing to rise, the issue has hit a breaking point. 

“The anger people feel is towards the political elite, who they feel don’t take care of them or address their daily concerns,” explained Jean-Yves Camus, French political scientist and research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. 

“Even the middle class understands there is an issue. I consider myself upper middle class and I am not sure that my two children will be able to live in Paris a few years from now. They earn a decent income. [...] But when there are four or five people in the family, you need to go quite far from the city to be able to afford a decent living," Camus said. 

Read moreThe price of Paris: What does it cost to live in the French capital?

As successive heatwaves have damaged crop yields and driven up agricultural costs, and the war in Iran has pushed up fuel and energy prices, "the price in supermarkets has surged so much that big families or single people really have to watch what they're buying," Camus explained.

“Many people in the country need to take their car to work every day. Most households even need to own two cars. That’s quite a cost,” he added. And with fuel prices unlikely to ease up at the pump anytime soon, those costs may keep climbing.

Eroded not only by inflation but by a drop in employment levels, the purchasing power of French households is expected to decline 0.4 percent this year, according to the national statistics agency, INSEE. 

The rate is similar to that of 2025, except a larger portion of the French population is feeling the effects this year. 

The fall in purchasing power in 2025 stemmed mainly from a drop in dividend income, which usually affects more affluent households. 

How candidates are responding

France’s presidential candidates are already homing in on the topic to rally support. 

Far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen, flanked by National Rally (Rassemblement national or RN) party president, Jordan Bardella, kicked off the political "rentrée" (France’s post-summer return to politics) with an event in the northern Pas-de-Calais region, last weekend. Before giving a speech in the RN stronghold of Henin-Beaumont to about 2,000 supporters, she posted on X that the cost of living was in a “state of absolute emergency”. 

Championing her campaign's central tenet of "national preference" – which would prioritise French nationals over immigrants – she turned to housing policy, pledging to "give French nationals priority access to social housing" and to "reserve" housing subsidies for them.

Le Pen also promised the crowd she would cut VAT from 20 to 5.5 percent for gas, electricity and heating oil. 

“Le Pen has convinced a lot of people that everything is due to immigration. She has a magic wand that makes people believe if you stop immigration, everything will be OK,” Camus said. “A lot of disgruntled voters in the working and middle class think that closing the country to immigration will enable the state to spend less on pension reform or make huge gains in the social security system. But that’s not true. Immigrants are also consumers. They pay their rent, they pay taxes.” 

Meanwhile, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Unbowed and Communist party leader, Fabien Roussel made their case at the “Fête de l’Humanité”, an annual festival that brings together left-wing political figures and musical performances. 

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Roussel, who announced his bid to run for president a week ago, focused on tackling gas prices. He urged people to “gather at roundabouts and outside Total’s headquarters" to force fuel prices to come down.

Mélenchon chose to point to oil supergiants like Total or BP who are benefitting from high prices per barrel. The far-left leader also promised that if elected, he would introduce a “social state of emergency” that would include capping the price of essential goods and profit margins, but also freeze rent increases.

Mélenchon also took the opportunity to reiterate his intention to establish a sliding scale for wages, directly indexing them to inflation. 

Read more‘Rain man’ to the rescue? France’s ex-president Hollande plots unlikely comeback

Former interior minister and head of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, Bruno Retailleau, spoke to young members of his party at a rally in Nogent-sur-Marne, an eastern suburb of Paris, on Saturday. Though a close associate told French daily Libération that the cost of living would be “the focus of the campaign”, Retailleau chose to direct his speech at his adversaries, slinging insults at “charlatans” Le Pen and Mélenchon or the “patch-and-mend types” like centre-right Horizons candidate, Edouard Philippe, or Gabriel Attal, of President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party.

But in his campaign promises, Retailleau has vowed to make “work” his priority. He proposes that French employees work 30 minutes more each day on average in order to earn “one or even two” extra months' salary per year.

Centre-right candidates Philippe and Attal both made public appearances over the weekend, but did not address the cost of living. 

“Philippe and Attal don’t offer much choice [on solutions to the cost of living] because they think that the only problem is public spending. For them, the French are more or less OK and France is a free market economy that’s running pretty well,” Camus said. 

For now, Le Pen is still largely the favourite in the 2027 election: Between 33-35 percent of French voters intend to cast their ballot for the far-right National Rally candidate. 

That combination of negative sentiment and a powerful appetite for radical change means France "ticks many boxes for a populist shift", Teinturier told AFP

"But the shift isn't inevitable," he said. Still, it is already reshaping the race, pushing even "traditional candidates to put forward radical measures".