Kalshi odds on Le Pen climb to 53% as French protests turn violent

Kalshi traders put Marine Le Pen’s chances of winning France’s 2027 presidential election at 53% on Tuesday afternoon, up from 39% a month earlier. Trading in the market on the identity of France’s next president increased after nationwide protests began.

The contract, titled “Next French presidential election winner?”, is to be verified by the French government in 2027. David Lisnard, who had been assigned a 44.7% chance on Sept. 26, a day after a major campaign rally, had fallen to 11% by Tuesday afternoon.

The political shift has unfolded amid a protest movement that began with student demands over school conditions and teacher shortages and broadened into anger over living costs and public services. Authorities said more than 500,000 people demonstrated nationwide over the weekend.

The demonstrations turned violent. Le Monde reported that more than 2,500 people were arrested and almost 1,000 security-force members were injured during the weekend unrest. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said police had “lost control” in some major cities, attributing the failure to a lack of anticipation. He said about 60,000 law-enforcement personnel had been deployed nationwide on Saturday.

More than 2,000 shops were expected to have been affected, with damage estimated at hundreds of millions of euros, according to Alain Di Crescenzo, president of the chamber of commerce. Saturday’s demonstrations followed four weeks of high-school protests, which had at times also become violent.

Le Pen has made the unrest a central campaign theme, arguing that Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government helped create the conditions behind it. She portrayed the violence as a crisis of authority and democracy, while National Rally cast the movement as evidence of the government’s failure to maintain order.

Other parties have adopted sharply different positions. Jean-Luc Mélenchon embraced the student movement, while Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused the extreme left of instigating violence in what he called a presidential-election “warm-up round,” according to Al Jazeera. Macron tasked Lecornu with bringing students, teachers, unions and elected officials together on proposals, alongside a tougher response to violence.

The unrest has sharpened attention on younger voters. An OpinionWay poll for Les Echos gave Mélenchon 49% support among voters aged 18 to 24, 10 percentage points above his 2022 level. Le Pen remained the leading presidential contender overall on 32% support, while National Rally ranked second among younger voters behind Mélenchon’s France Unbowed.

Macron, whose popularity stood at 15%, cannot seek a third term under the constitutional limit of two terms. France’s presidential election is scheduled for April 2027.