Campaign Following the 2017 presidential election
The Republicans (LR) sent its members a questionnaire on the topic of the "re-foundation" of the party; of the 40,000 respondents, 70% voted against an open primary like that which was held in
2016 to determine the party nominee. In a document dated 17 October 2017, the
Socialist Party (PS) wrote that the financing of the 2022 presidential campaign was not assured despite "economic restructuring" but still planned to spend €12,000,000, the maximum legally permitted before the first round. According to the report, the party's leadership had seriously considered the possibility of not presenting a PS candidate in 2022.
Marine Le Pen, the president of the
National Rally (RN), announced on 16 January 2020 that she would be running in the election. She previously ran in the
2012 and 2017 presidential elections as the party's candidate, then called the National Front (FN). She came third in 2012 with 17.9% of the vote in the first round and second in 2017 with 21.3% of the vote in the first round and 33.9% of the vote in the second round. Le Pen was elected to the
National Assembly in the
2017 French legislative election.
Jean Lassalle, who ran in the 2017 presidential election under the Résistons! banner, coming in seventh place with 1.2% of the vote, announced that he would run again. In 2020, MP
Joachim Son-Forget, a radiologist who was elected to the National Assembly for
La République En Marche! (LREM) in 2017, formed a new political party called Valeur Absolue and announced his intention to enter the race for the presidency. He had resigned from the
LREM group after posting tweets in 2018 that were deemed sexist; he then joined the
UDI and Independents group in 2019 before resigning his membership later that year. On 8 November 2020,
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of
La France Insoumise (LFI), announced that he would be running in the election. He previously ran in the 2012 presidential election for the
Left Front (coming fourth with 11.1% of the vote in the first round) and in the 2017 presidential election for LFI (coming fourth again with 19.5% of the vote in the first round). Mélenchon was elected to the National Assembly in 2017. In November 2021,
Ensemble Citoyens was founded. It is a
political coalition composed of the presidential majority led under
Emmanuel Macron. In January 2022,
Éric Zemmour's party
Reconquête, which was founded the month prior, gained a member of the National Assembly in
Guillaume Peltier, previously elected as a member of LR, as well as two
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) when
Jérôme Rivière and
Gilbert Collard defected from Le Pen's RN. Previously, Son-Forget, who had declared he would run for the presidency, rallied behind Zemmour's candidacy. In early February 2022, the party gained a third MEP when
Maxette Grisoni-Pirbakas defected from the RN.
Stéphane Ravier became Zemmour's first supporter in the
Senate after he left the RN mid-February 2022. In February 2022, a wave of defections hit
Valérie Pécresse, candidate put forward by LR, in favour of Macron. She was accused by members of the party's centrist wing of trying to pander to the voters of Zemmour, whose sharp rise in the polls has been qualified as "meteoric". During a rally in February 2022, Pécresse said "in ten years time ... will we be a sovereign nation, a US satellite or a Chinese trading post? Will we be unified or divided? Nothing is written, whether it is loss of economic status, or the
Great Replacement." She was criticised for referring to the Great Replacement; she later said that her mention was not an endorsement of what she considered to be a "theory of hate". The
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February had significant implications for the campaign. As media coverage switched to covering the war, Macron's polling improved significantly during the crisis. Le Pen and Zemmour were made to explain historic statements of praise for
Vladimir Putin. In a 14 March 2022 interview with newspaper
Le Figaro,
Gérard Larcher,
Senate President and a supporter of Pécresse, put into question the legitimacy of a possible second Macron term, stating: "If there is no campaign, the question of the legitimacy of the winner will arise." Those comments echoed Macron's refusal to participate in any debate with the other candidates prior to the election's first round. Macron formally announced his candidacy for re-election on 3 March 2022, by which time he had already received well more than the
sponsorships from elected officials to qualify for the ballot.
Marion Maréchal of the
Le Pen family, granddaughter of FN founder
Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of its current leader Marine Le Pen, formalised her support for Zemmour at a large rally in
Toulon on 6 March 2022. In the final days before the first round of voting, Le Pen's polling numbers improved to within the margin of error of defeating Macron in the second round, while those of Pécresse and Zemmour fell. Mélenchon's polling numbers also surged in the final days of campaigning. Left-leaning independent candidate
Christiane Taubira, former
Minister of Justice (2012–2014) under President
François Hollande and winner of the
2022 People's Primary vote, withdrew her candidacy on 2 March 2022, endorsing Mélenchon.
Primaries and congresses Ecologist primary In September 2021, the Ecology Pole organised a
presidential primary to determine their candidate. The following candidates participated in this primary: ;Nominee •
Yannick Jadot,
Member of the European Parliament since 2009 ; •
Sandrine Rousseau, deputy national secretary of
Europe Ecology – The Greens from 2016 to 2017 •
Delphine Batho, president of
Ecology Generation and deputy for the
2nd constituency of
Deux-Sèvres since 2013 •
Éric Piolle,
Mayor of
Grenoble since 2014 •
Jean-Marc Governatori, co-president of
Cap Écologie and city councillor for
Nice since 2020.
Socialist primary In October 2021, the
Socialist Party had its primary.
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo won with 72% of the vote. ;Nominee •
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of
Paris since 2014 The primary was conducted according to a
majority judgment voting system, in which all voters are to rate all candidates, with the candidate with the highest median rating winning. ;Nominee •
Christiane Taubira,
Minister of Justice 2012–2016 (withdrew, endorsed Mélenchon) ; • Anna Agueb-Porterie, environmental activist •
Anne Hidalgo,
Mayor of Paris since 2014,
Socialist Party candidate (
still a candidate) •
Yannick Jadot,
Member of the European Parliament since 2009,
Green Party candidate (
still a candidate) •
Pierre Larrouturou,
Member of the European Parliament since 2019 • Charlotte Marchandise, public health expert •
Jean-Luc Mélenchon,
Member of the National Assembly,
La France Insoumise candidate (
still a candidate)
The Republicans congress The Republicans selected their candidate via a congress of party members. On 4 December 2021,
Valérie Pécresse won the nomination with 60.95% of the votes against
Éric Ciotti. ;Nominee •
Valérie Pécresse,
President of the Regional Council of
Île-de-France since 2016 ; •
Éric Ciotti, deputy for the
1st constituency of
Alpes-Maritimes since 2007 •
Michel Barnier, head of the
Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2021 •
Xavier Bertrand,
President of the Regional Council of
Hauts-de-France since 2016 •
Philippe Juvin, Mayor of
La Garenne-Colombes since 2001
Candidates On 7 March 2022, the
Constitutional Council published names of the 12 candidates who received 500 valid sponsorships, with the order determined by drawing lots. File:2017-02-11 16-10-22 meeting-lo-belfort (cropped).jpg|
Nathalie Arthaud File:Roussel Fabien 1.jpg|
Fabien Roussel File:Emmanuel Macron June 2022 (3x4 cropped).jpg|
Emmanuel Macron File:Jean-Luc Mélenchon (9301728809) (cropped).jpg|
Jean-Luc Mélenchon File:Jean Lassalle 03 (cropped).jpg|
Jean Lassalle File:Марин Ле Пен (28-01-2022) (cropped) (cropped).jpg|
Marine Le Pen File:Portrait Éric Zemmour, avril 2022 cropped.jpg|
Éric Zemmour File:Hidalgo2020crop.jpg|
Anne Hidalgo File:20210819 jadot.yannick 5705.jpg|
Yannick Jadot File:Valérie Pécresse (2022) (cropped 2).jpg|
Valérie Pécresse File:Philippe Poutou - Gilets jaunes (2019).jpg|
Philippe Poutou File:Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, homme politique français (cropped).jpg|
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan Sponsorships A candidate must have secured 500
Présentation signatures from elected officials in order to appear on the first-round ballot. The signature collection period ended on 4 March. The table below lists sponsorships received by the Constitutional Council by candidate. On the form, this is named a
présentation but is more widely known as
parrainage. There were 46 individuals who received at least 1 sponsorship as of the closing date deadline of 4 March 2022. Some of them received sponsorships without being candidates, and one sponsored himself. Candidates labeled SE (
sans etiquette) do not belong to any political party. ;Colour legend
Electorate ==Second round==