“Many people started campaigning in June. What matters is what will happen at the end of this year and early next year,” he said.
Hollande had previously said he is “getting ready” ahead of the election but is postponing a decision until closer to the end of the year. He hopes favorable opinion polls and turmoil within his own center-left Socialist Party could offer him a path back to power.
But a comeback remains a long shot. Hollande left office in 2017 after having registered the lowest-ever approval rating — four percent — of any French president in recent history. He was loathed by both his opponents on the right and erstwhile allies on the left, who accused him of failing to pursue the ambitious progressive agenda he had promised during his campaign.
His image has improved over the past decade. A recent survey from French pollster Ifop placed him second in a ranking of 50 public figures, with 49 percent of respondents saying they held a positive view of the former president.
But likeability and electability are two different things. Three separate pollsters have tested Hollande as a Socialist Party candidate over the past month, and he was consistently shown receiving less than 10 percent of the projected vote and missing the runoff by a significant margin.
In French presidential elections, the two best-placed candidates advance to a second round if none receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Polling currently shows the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen well-placed to reach the runoff, with the race for second place much more open.