Left primary opens Friday with five candidates and about 140,000 eligible voters in France

Voting opens Friday

Five candidates are competing in the first round of the left primary, organised by the Socialist Party (PS), Place publique and GRS. Voting is electronic and runs from Friday morning, 9 October, to Saturday evening, 10 October, with results announced straight after the vote closes. The electoral truce begins on Friday and lasts until Saturday night, after which the candidates stop campaigning. A second round is possible the following weekend if no candidate wins outright in the first round. The winner will be the camp's candidate for the 2027 presidential election and faces the task of preventing an RN victory, offering an alternative to Macronism and retaking leadership of the left from LFI.

Who can vote

The organisers report 28,456 registrations at Place publique and 68,047 at the PS, roughly double the membership figures of 2025. To these are added 1,000 militants of Emmanuel Maurel's small party GRS and 42,695 non-member sympathisers who paid 15 euros to take part in the vote. In total, about 140,000 people will be able to choose the candidate, a figure that is far below earlier primaries. The 2011 primary that nominated François Hollande drew 2.6 million voters, and the 2017 citizen primary won by Benoît Hamon drew about 1.6 million. The 2006 closed primary, won by Ségolène Royal, drew about 180,000 voters, a number close to this year's.

Luc Carvounas, mayor of Alfortville and campaign director for Ségolène Royal, accepted the small turnout as the result of the choice made.

From the moment the choice was made to impose a census-based vote, we knew we would have a small primary and that there would be no popular momentum.

Patrick Kanner, head of the Socialist group in the Senate, took a more measured view of the figure.

Given the very short campaign and the organisation system, 140,000 is not extraordinary, but it is honourable.

Favourite under pressure

Raphaël Glucksmann, president of Place publique, is presented as the favourite by POLITICO and Le Figaro. Le Figaro writes that a victory in the first round now looks compromised, and that the influx of new voters, many of them not party members, makes the result harder to predict than ever. During the campaign Ségolène Royal, with the active help of Olivier Faure, pushed Glucksmann back to the status of 'stagiaire', or trainee, and attacked him on several fronts. Glucksmann acknowledged the weakness of the debates after the last of the three televised encounters on Sunday.

I am going to be very honest and very direct, I do not think we were up to the level.

Les Echos recalls that Anne Hidalgo won 1.75% in 2022, which the candidates now see as the danger facing the left.

Debates and controversy

Five candidates, including Glucksmann, Royal, Faure, Maurel and Jérôme Guedj, took part in the campaign, which included three televised debates. The campaign began with the exclusion of deputy Philippe Brun, who was accused of violence by a former collaborator. The debates did not produce, in the view of several observers, the popular momentum the organisers had hoped for. Polls cannot be used to predict the outcome, because POLITICO describes the electorate as difficult to poll. Voting closes on Saturday evening, and the result will decide whether a second round is needed the following weekend.