MARSEILLE, France (CN) — Jordan Bardella — the 28-year-old president of the far-right National Rally, or RN —surpassed his party's figurehead, Marine Le Pen, for the first time in a monthly ranking of France’s most favored political figures.
But his popularity isn’t a threat to the Le Pen family dynasty, which has ruled the RN since its founding. Experts argue this is the result of a carefully calculated, multi-year effort bolstered by Le Pen herself. And it’s clearly working.
“Jordan Bardella is a kind of product,” Pierre-Stéphane Fort, an investigative journalist that has spent over a year researching Bardella, said in a phone interview with Courthouse News. “He’s a marketing product that Marine Le Pen wanted and financed.”
Le Pen ran for the French presidency in 2012, and again against current President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and 2022. She won 41.5% of the vote in the last election, besting her previous showing. Her father started the party, and she has sought to rebrand the RN while retaining many of his positions.
She’s planning to run again in 2027, and if she succeeds, Le Pen said she’d appoint Bardella as prime minister, creating a sort of dual ticket. Recent polls suggest Le Pen has a shot at the win.
Bardella grew up in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis in a social housing complex, or cité, with a single mother. He doesn't have a university degree. His father, who took him on big vacations and financed his private schooling, isn’t part of the official narrative, according to Fort.
This is a stark contrast from the typical profile of French politicians, who usually have privileged backgrounds and hold degrees from a handful of universities that breed ministers and presidents. Le Pen is very much a part of the latter category.
The RN leveraged the difference in biographies to construct a story around Bardella that helps him resonate with young and working class voters, a demographic that Le Pen has struggled to win over. Fort says the narrative positions Bardella as the "self-made man," reinforcing the notion of France as a merit-based society where anyone can climb the social ladder through hard work and dedication.
“For the RN, this is very precious because he can use it to convey a political message,” Fort said. “‘I grew up in the social housing, I know the dangers of immigration, of delinquency’ … the typical discourse of the RN, but in his case, it’s credible, which wasn’t the case for Marine Le Pen.”
In the beginning of March, Bardella officially launched his campaign for the European elections from Marseille.
“During the meeting in Marseille … we had the feeling that he was giving a bit of a Gaullist speech, meaning the return of the state, a form of sovereigntism, but a sovereigntism which was not against Europe or a form of narrow nationalism, but rather a certain French pride,” Luc Rouban, a researcher specializing in the transformations of democracy in France and Europe, said over the phone.
In France, ahead of the European elections on June 9, political parties put together a list of their members that decides who will be sent to parliament, in order of preference. After the elections, depending on the percentage of delegates that each party secures, they will send a proportional number of delegates to act as ministers of parliament.
Bardella is the RN's ‘tête de liste,’ or ‘head of the list,’ meaning that he will almost certainly become a lawmaker in the European Parliament. He’s expected to attract a higher number of young, working class voters living in big cities than in traditional turnouts.
Bardella underwent media training from 2018-2022, Fort said, learning everything from how to smile to the art of dodging political attacks on screen.
He presents himself as the “ideal son-in-law” — always in a suit, traditional, old-school. He’s good looking, charismatic and known for his ‘punchlines,’ the provocative jabs he often laces into speeches and debates. He’s the third most popular French politician on TikTok, with over a million followers.
Sylvie Way, a 50-year-old woman living in northern France, started two Facebook groups in support of Bardella, one of which has over 30,000 members. Recent posts by members include a photo with text reading “France isn’t Africa!!!” In one, a blonde woman is draped in nothing but a French flag. There's a picture of Bardella at the gym, and a political poster of him that reads “France is coming back.”
“They engaged a lot of young people,” Way said. “They got the confidence of the young.”
When Way talks about Bardella, she refers to him by his first name.
“So, the strong points of Jordan,” Way said over the phone. “He comes from the communist area of the Seine-Saint-Denis, which means he knows them very well and he knows all of their faults.”
Way’s second point is that he never reads anything from a teleprompter or notes, and always speaks naturally — a nod to Bardella’s media savviness.
“The third is he does ‘punchlines’ like Donald Trump,” she continued. “I’m a fervent admirer of Donald Trump.”
The traditional political agenda of the RN advocates for policies promoting national identity. It is widely criticized for being xenophobic and racist. The Council of State maintains its classification of the RN as an extreme-right political party, despite attempts by the RN to remove ‘extreme’ from the classification.
The RN was founded and has always been led by the Le Pen family. But one of Bardella’s biggest selling points is that he isn’t a Le Pen.
“Marine Le Pen took the reins of what her father started … . She always had the name of the National Rally with the party, and her father that led it,” Way said. “Because he doesn’t have the name, you can’t demonize him — you can’t say ‘yes, he has the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father.’ It’s impossible.”
Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the RN in 1972, and the party has been tied up in scandals since then. His consistent antisemitic rhetoric — including Holocaust denial — was so abhorred that it left a legacy on the RN from which Marine Le Pen always struggled to break free.
Bardella offers a new opportunity for the party.
“He doesn't have a name that has always been associated with problems and scandals,” Rouban said. “So he can embody the idea of renewal of a conservative right.”
But Bardella’s views don’t really differ from Le Pen’s. He’s not necessarily leading the party toward reform, but he is the persona that could help rebrand its image.
For example, although Bardella appeared to take a divergent stance toward Putin — a longtime friend of the party — his voting record tells another story. In the European Parliament, he voted against most of the resolutions that condemned Putin, and those that denounced the prison regime of political opponents like Alexei Navalny. According to Fort, those votes demonstrate his alignment with the traditional pro-Putin stance of the RN.
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