A platform pitched at a changed electorate

Far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon presented his policy platform at a key rally near Paris on Saturday, months ahead of the 2027 French presidential election. The event put his programme before the voters his party counts on most: the generation that already carried him once.

That bet rests on a clear pattern. Mélenchon, who founded the France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, LFI) party, decidedly won the support of 18- to 34-year-olds in the 2022 presidential election. Recent polls suggest that if young voters turn out for him again, he could make it to the election's second and final round, to face off against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is leading the polls.

What the programme promises

The platform presented at the rally frames the offer in three broad commitments that map onto the concerns of gen z politics in France.

• •Fight climate change
• •Redistribute wealth
• •Stage a 'citizen's revolution' to encourage public participation in government

Whether that is enough to repeat 2022 is what the polls are testing. According to recent polling, youth support could carry Mélenchon into a head-to-head with Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader currently ahead nationally.

Inside Jeunes Insoumis.es

The machine behind that support has a name. Jeunes Insoumis.es, the LFI's youth group, tries to reach voters online and in the streets. The party also runs an annual 'summer university' for people under the age of 26 that this year included a meeting with Mélenchon himself.

The group is led in part by Livia Jampy, a 25-year-old co-chair of the LFI youth group and a city council member in Montpellier. She has pushed back against suggestions that young supporters back the candidate without grasping the programme, insisting that they understand fully what is at stake.

Critics and counter-arguments

The candidate's record gives his opponents material. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel, he has also been regularly accused of anti-Semitism. In his previous presidential run, he was criticised for his perceived leniency towards Russia and for pledging to leave NATO if elected.

Those criticisms sit alongside a political scientist's explanation of why the young vote holds anyway. Thibault Muzergues said Mélenchon is the last revolutionary on the left, and that this is what young people are aspiring to.

In his view, the support is constructive rather than merely angry. "It is not a protest vote. It is a vote to say the system has not worked for us and needs to be changed," Muzergues said, adding that young voters are less concerned with international issues but want systemic reform.

With five months to go before the presidential election, the question for the far-left candidate is whether the young voters who backed him in 2022 will again turn out in numbers - recent polls suggest that, if they do, he could reach the second round against poll leader Marine Le Pen.