13%: Macron Sets All-Time Confidence Low for a Sitting French President
November 7, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
An Elabe poll of 1,004 French adults conducted on November 3 and 4, 2026 records just 13 per cent trusting President Macron, the lowest figure ever measured for a French head of state, as his government battles a contested austerity budget and nationwide strikes simultaneously.
13 per cent. That is the share of French citizens who now trust Emmanuel Macron to handle the country's problems, according to the Elabe political barometer published for Les Échos on November 5. It is the lowest confidence figure ever recorded for a sitting French president.
The collapse has been fast. The Elabe poll of 1,004 adults, conducted on November 3 and 4, shows Macron down four points in a single month and eleven points since August. That places him below the previous floor of 14 per cent set by Socialist president François Hollande in November 2016, and below Macron's own previous record low of 14 per cent from October 2025.
The inverse number is more damaging. Elabe records 82 per cent of respondents saying they do not trust the president to address France's problems, with 60 per cent registering "no confidence at all." The erosion runs across demographics. Working-class households record 11 per cent confidence. Intermediate professions fall to 9 per cent. Retirees stand at 12 per cent. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, trust has dropped seven points in a month to 18 per cent, against a backdrop of fuel prices and union mobilisations over purchasing power. Managers, the most favourable group, hold at 25 per cent, down three points.
The Hollande comparison is instructive. Weeks after the former president hit 14 per cent in November 2016, he announced on December 1 that he would not stand for re-election, broken by divisions inside his own camp. Macron cannot seek a third term, but the trajectory leaves him in the same condition of institutional weakness entering the final months of his mandate.
His own voters have abandoned him in large numbers. Among those who backed him in the first round of the 2022 presidential election, confidence has fallen seven points to 36 per cent, according to Elabe. Among second-round voters, it sits at 23 per cent. Voters who backed Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022 record just 2 per cent confidence in the president.
The fall reaches into the government. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has hit his own personal low at 17 per cent confidence, the Elabe data show, down two points in a month and nine points since August. Among prime ministers appointed by Macron, only François Bayrou scored lower, at 12 per cent in September 2025. Lecornu faces simultaneous pressure: a contested budget for 2027 and mobilisations over purchasing power, including protests by secondary-school pupils, have run concurrently through the autumn.
At the top of the national confidence rankings, the Elabe poll places National Rally figures first and second: Marine Le Pen at 35 per cent and Jordan Bardella at 33 per cent, though Bardella has fallen to his lowest rating since April 2024. The 2027 presidential first round sits less than six months away.
A president at 13 per cent, with no re-election on the table and a government struggling to push its budget through a fractious parliament with no clear working majority, is running out of room to govern.
Published November 7, 2026 · Frisian News