France: Historically low popularity for the Prime Minister

New French Prime Minister François Bayrou takes office with a historically low popularity rating, with 66% of French people saying they are dissatisfied, according to a barometer published on Sunday.

Only 34% of those questioned say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the head of the centrist government appointed on December 13, according to this Ifop-JDD study published in the Journal du Dimanche.

Going back to 1959 and the appointment of Michel Debré, Ifop, which has been carrying out this barometer for decades, has not found such high levels of unpopularity for a prime minister immediately after taking office.

A fractured National Assembly

François Bayrou was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron after lengthy consultations to find a successor to Michel Barnier, whose minority government was overthrown by MPs after just three months in office.

Sixth head of government since Emmanuel Macron's first election in 2017 and the fourth in 2024, he hopes to form a government in the coming days to provide the country with a budget but the difficulty is to get it through a fractured National Assembly .

A sign of the difficulties that await him, the proportion of dissatisfied with François Bayrou greatly exceeds that recorded by Michel Barnier in September 2024 (55%), by Gabriel Attal in January 2024 (46%) and by Élisabeth Borne in May 2022 (43 %).

“Emmanuel Macron finds a little oxygen”

This poll, however, reflects a slight improvement for Mr. Macron. The total number of satisfied people is up 2 points compared to last month, at 24%, compared to 76% of dissatisfied people (- 2 points).

“The Trump-Zelensky meeting in Paris, the reopening of (the cathedral) Notre-Dame contribute to slightly restoring its image,” observed for the JDD the director of Ifop, Frédéric Dabi.

“Emmanuel Macron finds a little oxygen in the distinction of the presidential function he occupies compared to the rest of the political staff,” he adds.

Concerning François Bayrou, his first week in Matignon was especially marked by the barrage of criticism on his presence on the municipal council of Pau, a town in the south-west of which he intends to remain mayor, in the midst of a crisis in the Mayotte archipelago. The survey was conducted online from December 11 to 18 with a sample of 2,004 people, representative of the French population aged 18 and over.

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