During the Bibliothèques idéales festival in Strasbourg, former Paris councilor and feminist writer Alice Coffin was asked about the voting intentions of the LGBT community for the upcoming 2027 French presidential election. She replied, “LGBT people who will vote for the far-right are mainly the G,” adding that gay men should “take responsibility” while implying that lesbians are not part of the problem. The comment, broadcast on the Instagram account SimiliQueer, sparked immediate debate among activists and poll watchers.
Alice Coffin’s statement at the Strasbourg festival
Coffin, author of *Le Génie lesbien* and *Le camp du bien*, framed the issue as a moral split inside the community: gay men allegedly drifting toward the radical right, lesbians supposedly staying away. She cited a figure she remembered – roughly one-third of LGBT respondents – that supposedly supported an extremist candidate. However, she did not provide the precise source or the gender breakdown, leading many to question whether the claim matched the underlying data.
What the IFOP poll actually shows
The IFOP poll commissioned by the LGBTQ+ magazine têtu· was conducted in. It surveyed 10,196 French adults, of which 1,137 identified as gay, bisexual, or pan-sexual men and women. After weighting, the final LGBT subsample comprised 434 gay-identified men and 322 lesbian-identified women. When the numbers are narrowed to those who expressed a voting intention for the 2027 presidential first round, the figures shrink to 214 gay men and 78 lesbians.
In the scenario tested, Jordan Bardella (RN) attracted 25 % of gay men’s declared support but 37 % of lesbians. Éric Zemmour received 4 % from gay men and none from lesbians. Adding the two candidates gives a “far-right” total of 29 % for gay men and 37 % for lesbians – an eight-point gap that actually places lesbians **higher**, not lower, than gay men. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan registered 0 % in both groups.
When the analysis is broadened to combine gay and bisexual men (214 + additional bisexual respondents) versus lesbian and bisexual women (78 + additional bisexual respondents), the gap narrows dramatically: roughly 27 % of men and 26 % of women indicated a far-right vote. The margin is therefore virtually negligible, directly contradicting Coffin’s claim.
Broader context: gender and far-right voting
Earlier IFOP data for the 2022 presidential race revealed a slightly different pattern: the RN secured 21 % of lesbian intentions versus 16 % of gay men, while Zemmour attracted 14 % of gay men and only 3 % of lesbians. Over the four-year interval, RN support among lesbians rose from 21 % to 37 % (a 16-point increase), whereas among gay men it grew from 16 % to 25 % (nine points). This suggests a more pronounced upward trend among lesbian respondents, but the absolute levels remain close to those of gay men in the 2027 snapshot.
Research on the whole electorate further weakens the notion of a “male-only” far-right base. Political scientists Anja Durovic, Nonna Mayer and Noémie Piolat examined post-legislative voting behaviour of 5,109 respondents in 2025. Their study found no statistically significant gender gap in RN voting, even among 18-29-year-olds. In the 2024 European elections, women actually out-voted men for the RN list. High-profile figures such as Marine Le Pen, her niece Giorgia Meloni, and German AfD leader Alice Weidel (a lesbian) illustrate that gender does not provide immunity from far-right affiliation.
Methodologically, the IFOP figures must be read with caution. Small subgroup sizes inflate confidence intervals, meaning that a few respondents can shift percentages noticeably. Nevertheless, the pattern across both the 2022 and 2026 surveys consistently shows that lesbian voters are **not** less attracted to the far-right than gay men, and in some instances are more so.
In sum, Coffin’s statement, while rhetorically striking, is not supported by the quantitative evidence supplied by the IFOP study. The data instead reveal a nuanced picture in which both gay men and lesbians demonstrate comparable, and sometimes rising, openness to extremist candidates.
