Le Pen's lead over Mélenchon in French runoff widens to 40 points

The Toluna-Harris poll on the French presidential runoff puts Marine Le Pen at 70% against Jean-Luc Mélenchon's 30%, a 40-point lead. In the other head-to-heads, Le Pen beats Édouard Philippe 57% to 43% and Raphaël Glucksmann 59% to 41%.

The latest instalment of the **Toluna-Harris** barometer on the French presidential race delivers a figure that shapes the whole conversation: in a hypothetical second-round runoff, **Marine Le Pen** would defeat **Jean-Luc Mélenchon** by **70%** to **30%**. That is a 40-point gap, and the movement matters as much as the level: Le Pen gains **3 points** while Mélenchon drops another **3** compared with the previous measurement.

## A 70-30 that is more than just a number

That result does not describe a simple balance of forces. It describes a scenario in which the non-Le Pen electorate finds no reason to mobilise against her. Mélenchon, as an opponent, concentrates the rejection of almost the entire political spectrum, including much of the centre and moderate right. The 40-point lead is a snapshot of a runoff that, framed this way, would not be competitive.

The timing detail helps: the poll compares with fieldwork from **5 to 8 October 2026**, and in that interval the blocs have not moved towards the centre, but towards the extremes. Le Pen gains ground without giving any up in her own space.

## The other head-to-heads tell a different story

Against **Édouard Philippe**, Le Pen wins by **57%** to **43%**: a 14-point lead, one point more than before. Against **Raphaël Glucksmann**, the result is **59%** to **41%**, an 18-point gap, with no recorded change. Clear victories, but of a different scale.

The reading is simple: Le Pen is not unbeatable, but her floor is high. Philippe and Glucksmann hold up better because they retain part of the centrist vote that Mélenchon scares away. The difference between 40 points and 14 does not measure Le Pen; it measures the opponent.

## What a poll like this really measures

A runoff poll does not predict an election: it measures voting intention in a hypothetical scenario against a specific opponent. Toluna-Harris works with samples and margins of error, and the distance between 70-30 and 57-43 depends on who Le Pen faces. None of these runoffs has actually been called.

What matters is the trend: Le Pen rises in every pairing and her rivals do not recover. That, more than the 70%, is what deserves attention.