The first round of voting in the French presidential election is just 200 days away. On Sunday 10 April 2022 voters will start the process of deciding whether Emmanuel Macron keeps his job for five more years or is forced to step aside.

At the last presidential contest in 2017, voters were presented with a list of eleven candidates from which to choose. As no candidate scored more than 50%, the two leaders went through to a second round vote two weeks later. Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National by 66% to 34%.

So far, more than 30 people have presented themselves as potential candidates at next year’s election. That number could go up even more before then falling back to something more reasonable, once people drop out or parties coalesce around a single candidate. One of the requirements that tends to weed out the weaker candidates is the need to persuade at least 500 of the roughly 40,000 elected officials in France to provide signatures of support or parrainages.

So who’s in the running this year? I'll avoid giving all 30 but will provide a quick summary of those who stand the best chance of winning or, at least, having an impact on the campaign.

1. Emmanuel Macron

A cheeky wink from President Macron, alongside his wife, Brigitte. Author: Government of Ukraine

The current president swept to power in 2017 on a wave of disillusionment with traditional parties and a promise that he was ‘neither left, nor right’. That positioning has been tarred somewhat by the impression that he is more right than left, but he remains a serious contender. Indeed, opinion polls still point to a repeat of the 2017 second-round run-off between Macron and Marine Le Pen, in which he would still win but with a less convincing margin of 56% to 44%.

2. Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen announcing the change of party name to Rassemblement National. Author: Les Ecolos De Reims

Like her father before her, Marine Le Pen is becoming a regular of presidential elections, having stood in each one since 2012. Despite reaching the second round last time she wasn’t helped by a poor performance in the TV debate with Macron a few days before the vote. Since then, Le Pen has been trying to de-toxify her party and rid it of some of the associations with her father that she believes have put off many potential supporters.

3. Xavier Bertrand

Xavier Bertrand in action. Author: European People's Party

There’s a crop of contenders from the centre-right of French politics, although not all of them are affiliated to the official centre-right party, Les Républicains. Xavier Bertrand is one of them. He’s been a fairly familiar figure in French politics for a while, having been a minister in both the Chirac and Sarkozy presidencies and is currently the leader of the Hauts de France region. He declared early, trying to position himself as the natural candidate of the centre right in this election. Les Républicains is considering an American-style primary contest to select its candidate although Bertrand, speaking on news channel BFMTV, says he won’t take part if they do. Nevertheless, he promises there will be only one candidate for the centre-right in the election, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

4. Valerie Pécresse

Valérie Pécresse. Author: Jacques Paquier

Valérie Pécresse is also centre-right, also fairly familiar to the French and also not an official member of Les Républicains (she left to form her own party, Soyons Libres, in 2017). However, unlike Bertrad, she wants to play nice and says she would take part in a primary contest. Like Bertrand, she has her own regional fiefdom, which is the Ile-de-France, where she’s been the regional president since 2015, She has also been trying to carve out her positioning, telling news magazine Le Point in August that she’s ‘two-thirds Merkel and one-third Thatcher’. We’ll see what the voters make of that. While Pécresse and Bertrand appear the candidates to beat on the right at the moment, there are three others who could steal the crown. They are: Michel Barnier, former EU commissioner and Brexit negotiator, Philippe Juvin, a medical doctor and mayor of a Parisian suburb, Eric Ciotti, member of Parliament for the Alpes-Maritime constituency, which includes the city of Nice.

5. Anne Hidalgo

Anne Hidalgo. Author: Jacques Paquier

Anne Hidalgo is the mayor of Paris and a member of the Parti Socialiste. In the 2017 election, the PS candidate Benoit Hamon scored a lamentable 6% in the first round of voting, so she’ll be looking to do better than that if she gets the nod from the party. Hidalgo is the daughter of Spanish immigrants and has recently published a book on her life and ideas, ‘Une Femme Francaise’, extolling her working class roots as well as her potential to be the first woman president. She’ll face some challengers – such as that of former minister and popular left-winger Arnaud Montebourg – but seems likely to get the nod on 14 October when party activists vote.

6. Eric Zemmour

Eric Zemmour. Author: Thesupermat

Eric Zemmour has not yet declared himself a candidate but he’s the one getting most of the coverage at the moment. Zemmour is a journalist, writer and TV commentator who, until recently, was appearing nightly on the rolling news channel C News. He is a lively and talented debater and offers opinions that are characterised as far right, although he doesn’t align himself with the Rassemblement National. Many in that party see Zemmour as a threat who could split the far right vote in the first round of voting. In some ways, he’s the Trump of this election. The outsider who has a compelling TV presence, plenty of grass roots support and able to suck all the attention in his direction. In other ways, he’s no Trump. Whatever you think of his politics, his intellect and eloquence are undeniable.

7. Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Author: Cancilleria del Ecuador

Like Zemmour, Mélenchon is another lively, eloquent and compelling personality who knows how to handle a TV studio and a live audience. Unlike Zemmour, he sits at the other end of the spectrum. His party, La France Insoumise, sits to the left of the PS. He stood in the last two elections and scored a very respectable 20% in 2017. It’s not clear whether he’ll have the momentum behind him this time to perform quite as well.

There are others who’ve declared their intention to run who are worth keeping an eye on too. The greens – EELV (Europe Ecologie Les Verts) - are in the process of selecting their candidate and, after a first round of voting, will choose between Yannick Jadot – the favourite - and Sandrine Rousseau in the days to come. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan is an MP with his own right wing party, Debout la France, and stood in the 2012 and 2017 elections, getting less than 5% each time. Another potential candidate who could fragment the far right vote is Florian Philippot, a former lieutenant of Marine Le Pen, who left and set up his own party, Les Patriotes.

Stay tuned for updates on how the race is going.