Marine Le Pen is the most prominent politician of the National Rally (RN), France's hard-right party, which leads polls by a wide margin. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founded the party's extremist, antisemitic and xenophobic predecessor in 1972 with a former member of the Waffen-SS. She took over the movement from her father in 2011 and kicked him out of the party as part of a campaign to shed its toxic elements. Under Ms Le Pen's leadership the RN has been rebranded and scrubbed up. The number of RN seats in the 577-seat National Assembly has shot up from eight in 2017 to 123. In an Ifop poll of September 2025, Ms Le Pen would sail into the second-round presidential run-off with 33%. A court has banned her from running for electoral office with immediate effect, over a European Parliament party-financing offence. The court of appeal is due to rule in July 2026 whether to uphold the ban; if it does, Jordan Bardella will stand in her place. The pair have agreed he would be the RN's presidential candidate in that event.
When a court barred her from standing for public office over misuse of European Parliament funds, she denounced it as a "political decision" and deplored the "tyranny of the judges." Donald Trump called the ruling a "Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen". She says public-service broadcasting has "a clear problem with neutrality" and wants to largely privatise it.
She has said of the EU: "We do not want to leave the table. We want to finish the game and win, to take power in France and in Europe and give it back to the people." She opposes the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. She criticised the EU's trade deal with Donald Trump, calling it "a political, economic and moral fiasco". A narrow majority of supporters of the National Rally told pollsters they were in favour of a bigger defence budget.
In October 2025, amid a political crisis over the resignation of prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, a poll of first-round voting intentions put the RN on top at 33-34%, the combined left on 24% and Macron's centrists on just 14-16%. Some analysts estimated the RN could secure 240-270 seats in a fresh election—short of an outright majority (289) but not far off.
In the March 2026 mayoral elections the RN claims to have won 70 town halls, up from 13. However, a poll after the vote found 42% of respondents thought Edouard Philippe would make a "good candidate" for the presidency, slightly below Ms Le Pen's 42% and Jordan Bardella's 45%. Edouard Philippe emerged as a serious rival.
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.