The first polls focusing on Teddy Riner yielded dramatically different results. On Tuesday, November 10, an Ifop-Fiducial survey for LCI and Sud Radio revealed that 22% of French respondents said they were ready to vote for the five-time Olympic champion, a candidate in the 2027 presidential election. Twenty-four hours later, however, a Cluster17 poll conducted for Politico gave him only 2% of the vote in a scenario involving eighteen candidates. At first glance, the difference may seem considerable. But the two polls do not measure the same thing: the first assesses the electoral potential of a newly launched campaigner, while the second asks voters to express a preference among several competing candidates.
The Ifop -Fiducial poll, conducted on November 9th and 10th among 1,003 people aged 18 and over, asked a simple question: would respondents be willing to vote for Teddy Riner? Four percent answered "definitely" and 18% "probably," for a total of 22%. This figure therefore does not correspond to voting intentions measured in a first-round scenario. The survey also revealed that 70% of respondents had a favorable opinion of the judoka, including 13% with a very favorable opinion. This particularly high popularity reflects the positive image the athlete maintains among a large segment of the public, but it is not, on its own, sufficient to determine his electoral support compared to the other candidates.
When eighteen candidates are put forward, Riner only receives 2%
The Cluster17 poll for Politico uses a different approach. Respondents must choose between eighteen candidates appearing simultaneously on a first-round list. In this particularly fragmented scenario, Teddy Riner receives 2% of the vote, the same as Gabriel Attal, François Ruffin, and Éric Zemmour. Marine Le Pen reaches 27% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon 19%, while Raphaël Glucksmann, Édouard Philippe, David Lisnard, and Christine Lagarde are each credited with 8%. These figures are highly dependent on the chosen configuration: the simultaneous presence of numerous figures, some of whom are not officially candidates, spreads the vote among a wider range of names than in typical presidential scenarios.
It would therefore be misleading to claim that Teddy Riner lost twenty points in a single day. Neither poll measures a change between two comparable dates. The first indicates that slightly more than one in five respondents might consider voting for him; the second shows that, faced with seventeen other candidates in a specific scenario, a much smaller proportion would choose him.
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