France votes this weekend to choose the rightwing candidate likely to face the far-right Marine Le Pen in next spring’s presidential election – just as Donald Trump’s US win has thrown the spotlight on France as the scene of the next possible shakeup of the political system.

Polls have consistently shown that Le Pen, head of the far-right Front National, will make it to the French presidential final-round run-off next May, but that it would be difficult for her to win.

The three leading contenders in the open primary race to choose the right’s candidate on Sunday are all establishment figures – two former prime ministers, Alain Juppé and François Fillon, and the former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

For weeks they have been fighting over who could better unite French voters against the far-right in a country still struggling with mass unemployment and a major terrorism threat.

Juppé, 71, the mayor of Bordeaux who served as prime minister under Jacques Chirac in 1995, is France’s most popular politician and has for months been the favourite. He has led a centrist campaign pledging pro-business reform but also promoting social harmony against hard-right identity politics, vowing: “I won’t turn people in France against each other”.

Juppé has undergone a staggering image transformation since the 1990s, when he was the most loathed French prime minister in modern times and 2 million people took to the streets in protest against his pension changes.

In 2004 he received a 14-month suspended sentence and was barred from holding elected office for a year over a corrupt 1980s scheme that illegally put workers for Jacques Chirac’s party on the payroll of the Paris town hall. Although it is accepted that he did not profit personally and was seen as having taken the flak for Chirac, the case could come back to haunt him during a fierce presidential campaign.

Since Trump’s election, critics have warned he would seem too old-school establishment against Le Pen, with echoes of the US campaign. “I am not Hillary Clinton, and France is not America,” he said this week, insisting he could be trusted to take swift action on major reform.

Sarkozy’s bid for a political comeback is seen as his last chance in French politics. He has led a hardline campaign on identity politics, targeting Muslims and minorities, denying climate change and unashamedly veering into Le Pen’s far-right territory.

Sarkozy remains a divisive figure in France but he has loyal core support in his Les Républicains party, which is expected to turn out massively to vote.

He wants to ban the Muslim headscarf from universities and public companies, limit the French nationality rights of children born of foreign parents and has insisted that children who don’t eat pork should lose their special school dinner options and instead eat chips.

Although he supported Clinton in the US election, since Trump’s win he has styled himself as anti-elite and has promised to go against all that is “politically correct”. His campaign has been hampered by legal woes – including when the French state prosecutor recommended he should face a criminal trial over alleged illegal campaign funding.

In the final campaign debate on Thursday night, Sarkozy was quizzed about fresh claims that he received millions in funding from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi towards his 2007 campaign. Sarkozy had no answer and, losing his cool, said the question was “disgraceful”.

François Fillon, Sarkozy’s former prime minister, has gained in the polls in recent days to become a serious challenger. A devoted admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Fillon has the boldest project for economic reform – vowing to cut 500,000 public sector jobs in the next five years.

A Paris MP, he is also a symbol of the provincial French right. A Catholic from a village in north-west France where he lived with his Welsh wife and their five children, he voted against same-sex marriage when it was introduced by the current Socialist government and surged in the polls after publishing a book on the fight against radical Islam, saying: “No, there isn’t a religious problem in France. Yes, there is a problem linked to Islam.” He said the solution was not to target law-abiding Muslims, but to target fundamentalism.

The candidates’ economic programmes are, however, similar: lowering public spending, curbing the 35-hour week, scrapping France’s wealth tax, cutting state jobs and overhauling welfare.

The younger political generation has so far failed to take the lead in the primary race: the two youngest candidates, former ministers Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 43, and Bruno Le Maire, 47, aren’t expected to reach the final run-off.

The deep unpopularity of Socialist president François Hollande and his fractured party means the French left are not currently predicted to make it to the final round of the presidential elections next May.

The right’s primary vote is open to any voter who signs a charter saying they agree with the “Republican values of the centre and the right” and pays €2. About 3.5 million people are expected to turn out, including some leftwingers.

“Two euros seems cheap to have a say in keeping out Sarkozy,” said one leftwing publisher.

François Miquet-Marty, head of Viavoice pollsters, said there was major interest in the primary in part “because we’re in a period where people are looking for solutions and want a quick transformation to get France out of its rut. Sarkozy’s presidency was seen as disappointing, Hollande’s has been seen as insufficient. So there’s a big interest in who tomorrow’s candidate would be.”

The first round in the right’s primary race takes place on 20 November and the second-round run-off on 27 November.



The candidates

Alain Juppé, 71, is the moderate, centre-right mayor of Bordeaux and former prime minister under Jacques Chirac. Once nicknamed “Amstrad” for his robotic efficiency and cold, grey image, he is now France’s favourite politician.

Nicolas Sarkozy, 61, is leader of the right’s Les Républicains party. He was French president from 2007 to 2012. His hard-right views on immigration, identity and security have won support from a loyal rightwing core but made him a hate figure on the left.

François Fillon, 62, was Sarkozy’s prime minister, but has since questioned Sarkozy’s style and policies. As prime minister, he warned France was facing bankruptcy and is running on a pro-business reform agenda, promising to tackle economic woes.

Bruno Le Maire, 47, was an agriculture minister during Sarkozy’s presidency. The Normandy MP styled himself as the candidate for “renewal” but struggled to shake off an image as an over-educated technocrat.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 43, was a popular ecology minister under Sarkozy. She was sacked as vice-president of Sarkozy’s Les Républicains party in December 2015 after she criticised his leadership. She is the only woman in the contest.