Rumors that France's next presidential election could be stolen or rigged are already circulating online, fuelled by figures from the country's conspiracy theory scene. The claim was even the subject of a round table titled "Will they steal the presidential election from the French?", held on September 12 in Arras during the Assises de la Souveraineté (Sovereignty Assizes), an event organised by Les Patriotes, the party led by Florian Philippot.
The idea extends well beyond that event. More than 6,000 original posts on X have raised the theme since the start of September, according to research using Visibrain, a social media analysis tool. As the presidential election approaches, a recurring narrative has taken hold suggesting that President Emmanuel Macron, the European Union or some secret institution are trying to stop the French from freely choosing the country's next leader.
Tristan Mendès France, an associate lecturer at Université Paris Cité and a specialist in digital culture, described it as a fairly recurring piece of background noise that is now growing louder. He said the current political climate was one of pre-election jitters, which turns the rumor into a market worth reactivating.
A narrative built on misleading claims
Philippot, Marine Le Pen's former right-hand man, did not wait for the Arras event to develop the idea. He has been promoting it since 2022 and has stepped up his public statements on the subject in recent months. In his latest appearance, a YouTube video posted on Monday, September 14, he suggested a link between an October 17 call for mobilisation and a hypothetical state of emergency. Speaking to his roughly 680,000 subscribers, he said Macron clearly wanted to play a bad trick on the country over the presidential election, adding that nothing was impossible with Macron and that no possibility should be ruled out. He went on to sketch a scenario in which the government would use public disorder as a pretext to postpone or prevent the vote.
It echoes a claim identified a year earlier, in 2025, during a period of political crisis, when some suggested Macron would invoke Article 16 of the constitution to grant himself full powers. That claim was no more credible in 2025 than it is now.
Philippot also spent months arguing that Macron was refusing to announce the dates of the presidential election, calling it contrary to all custom and asking what he could still be plotting. The dates have since been announced, in strict accordance with the calendar set out in the constitution, though that has not stopped him from continuing to promote the rumor.
The Romania precedent
Conspiracy theorists routinely bend real events to fit their narrative, and the case of Romania is regularly cited as proof of EU interference in presidential elections. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, for one, suggested the EU would tomorrow do the same thing in France, calling the prospect terrifying.
In fact, Brussels never annulled Romania's first round of voting. That decision was made by Romania's Constitutional Court in November 2024, in a context the court described as involving multiple irregularities and violations of electoral law. Documents showed a massive digital campaign had run on TikTok in favor of far-right candidate Calin Georgescu, and more than 3,600 political adverts had run on Facebook, at an estimated cost of several hundred thousand euros, even though Georgescu had declared no campaign spending at all. The Romanian Constitutional Court ruled it was materially impossible for that to be the case, a decision made independently of a separate investigation opened by the European Commission.
Mendès France said the Romanian episode had fed a great many actors in this sphere, and that figures such as Dupont-Aignan and Philippot are still drawing on it today.
A false claim about the European Parliament
The European Union has become the target of a fresh rumor this autumn. On September 3, a flyer shared on X claimed the European Parliament had voted for the possible cancellation of the French presidential election. In reality, while a report on a so-called "European democracy shield" was adopted in September, it merely proposes tools to counter interference, hybrid threats and disinformation. Neither that report, the European Parliament nor any other supranational institution has the power to cancel an election in a member state; such decisions rest solely with national electoral authorities.
A climate of growing distrust
Mendès France said all these narratives were fed by a wide range of different arguments: for some it is interference from Brussels, for others a plot by the "deep state," and for others still an attempt by Macron's camp to cling to power. None of these explanations, he said, survives contact with the facts.
He pointed to powerful precedents abroad that have made the rumor more resonant, saying the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol, followed two years later by the assault by supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, accelerated this kind of conspiratorial discourse around elections worldwide, making the idea of a "stolen" election feel almost mainstream.
He added that the current period offers an especially favorable environment, describing it as an unfavorable alignment of the stars between economic conditions, the geopolitical situation and domestic political instability. Those fragilities, he said, make fertile ground for suspicion about electoral processes.
Election's legitimacy already under attack
In this climate, every difficulty becomes a potential clue, every measure against disinformation is read as a threat of mass censorship, and every opinion poll is treated as evidence of manipulation. The narrative no longer rests on a single argument, Mendès France said, but on that fertile ground, to which believers simply keep adding fresh insinuations.
That, he said, is what makes the rumor a dangerous discourse. Even though an episode like the Capitol riot is less conceivable in France, he said, it is the electoral process itself, the foundation stone of democracy, that is being cast under suspicion. Whether or not the theory takes hold, he said, it is harmful regardless.
With about a year and a half to go before the vote, fact-checkers say it is not the cancellation of the election that is actually taking shape, but rather a battle over its legitimacy that is already being fought online.
