The newest contender, the 49-year-old Vallaud, has been president of the Socialists in the National Assembly since 2022 — making him one of the party’s most prominent figures alongside Faure. Vallaud comes from the same crop of French politicians as current President Emmanuel Macron. Both attended the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration and Vallaud succeeded Macron as former Hollande’s deputy chief of staff, a position the current president occupied before he launched his own centrist political party.
The stakes are high for the Socialists. For decades, they were France’s biggest left-wing party, and their broad tent encompassed much of the French left’s ideological spectrum.
But Hollande’s disappointing presidency left many of his voters disillusioned with the party and allowed the outspoken former Socialist senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon to build his populist France Unbowed movement into a credible alternative for voters now seeking more radical change.
The last two presidential elections ended in catastrophe for the Rose party. In 2022, the party’s nominee for president — Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo — scored less than 2 percent of the vote in the first round of the contest while Mélenchon nearly made the runoff.
Confronted with this new electoral reality, Faure, chose to bring the Socialists into an alliance alongside France Unbowed and other leftist parties in a bid to prevent the far right from winning snap elections last summer.
The move, though unpopular with a large swath of the Socialists, allowed the party to retain seats in parliament after coming close to extinction.