Who will come out on top in the Social Democratic primary? Some 140,000 voters have until 6 p.m. Sunday to choose among the five contenders, including favorite Raphaël Glucksmann, who hopes to be elected in the first round, after a cyberattack which disrupted the process.
While voting is only done electronically, a cyberattack, launched Friday morning at the opening of the vote, slowed down connections on the dedicated platform, and forced the organizers to extend the vote until Sunday 6 p.m., leaving the result, which must be known immediately, more uncertain than ever.
“We are clearly facing an attack on French democracy, which goes well beyond the Socialist primary,” said the president of the primary organizing committee, Patrick Mennucci, in La Tribune Dimanche. Voting was able to resume normally on Friday evening. Saturday at 10 p.m., more than 107,000 people had voted.
Raphaël Glucksmann hopes to win in the first round, counting on his numerous supports within the PS (notably the heads of the two parliamentary groups of the Assembly and the Senate), in addition to his supporters from Place publique. A second round is planned if necessary on October 16 and 17.
Facing him, the boss of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure appears as a challenger. He is counting on party patriotism to win, but is only credited in the polls with 3 to 5% of the votes, far from the voting intentions of the MEP, who is between 10 and 12%. The former 2007 presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, also hopes to do well, twenty years after being in the second round of a presidential election. A Harris Interactive poll for M6 and RTL published on Friday places it in second position in the preferences of the French, behind Mr. Glucksmann and ahead of Olivier Faure. The deputies Jérôme Guedj (PS) and Emmanuel Maurel (Republican and Socialist Left) are outsiders in this primary.
“Erasing” of the PS
But with a large proportion of voters who are not from the organizing political parties and have registered on a dedicated platform, the electorate remains largely unknown.
Raphaël Glucksmann, very identified internationally and in Europe, sees in this primary the beginning of a “refoundation of the left” with a clear break with La France insoumise and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This was also his main subject of disagreement with Olivier Faure and Ségolène Royal, during the televised debates. Supported by MP Jérôme Guedj, Mr. Glucksmann, who considers that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is playing with the codes of anti-Semitism, accused the boss of the PS Olivier Faure of wanting to get closer to the rebellious patriarch, as he has already done twice at the time of Nupes (2022) and the New Popular Front (2024).
Olivier Faure, supporter of a gathering of the left in the Assembly, accused him in return of wanting to get closer to the center, reviving the “macronism” trial which sticks to the skin of the MEP. And he, who had designated Mr. Glucksmann as head of the PS list for the European elections in 2019 and 2024, now considers that a victory for the MEP would mean the “erasure” of the PS in the presidential election. Ségolène Royal also deplored a “hold-up” by the leader of Place publique on the PS. For his part Raphaël Glucksmann felt that he was “the only one” to truly believe in a victory for social democracy in the presidential election, and that his competitors had “the spirit of defeat”.
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Dissensions which presage a difficult rally behind whoever will be chosen as the winner. Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Saturday that he was waiting for the primary “to happen. Once the socialist candidate is chosen, the picture will be more stabilized,” he said. “Well, not quite on their side,” he quipped.
If the primary attracted more people than the 90,000 registered expected by the organizers, it is far from the heyday of the PS: in 2012, the one which led to the victory of François Hollande gathered between 2.6 and 2.8 million voters. In 2017, the primary which nominated Benoit Hamon still brought together between 1.6 and 2 million.
