The French Socialist Party held a two-round presidential primary to select a candidate for the 2017 presidential election on 22 and 29 January 2017. It was the second open primary (primaires citoyennes) held by the centre-left coalition, after the primary in 2011 in which François Hollande defeated Martine Aubry to become the Socialist nominee. Hollande went on to defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. However, because of his low approval rating, he announced that he would not seek re-election, becoming the first president of the Fifth Republic to decide not to run for a second term. The primary was contested by seven candidates, four from the Socialist Party and three representing other parties part of the left-wing electoral alliance (la Belle Alliance populaire).

The three frontrunners in the first round of the primary were Manuel Valls, who served as Hollande's Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016 and interior minister from 2012 to 2014; Benoît Hamon, Minister of National Education in 2014; and Arnaud Montebourg, Minister of the Economy, Production Recovery and the Digital Sector from 2012 to 2014. On 22 January, Hamon received 36.03% and Valls 31.48% of the vote in the first round and advanced to the runoff, far ahead of all other candidates and well ahead of Montebourg, who was eliminated and immediately endorsed Hamon. In the runoff, Hamon easily defeated Valls, beating the ex-PM by nearly 20 percentage points, and officially took the mantle as nominee of the PS in the 2017 presidential election.

Background At the 2012 Toulouse Congress, the Socialist Party (PS) modified its statutes to guarantee the selection of a candidate of the left through open primaries, with the National Council of the Socialist Party announcing the timetable and organization of the primaries at least one year beforehand. On 11 January, Libération published an editorial in favor of a "primary of the left and ecologists", and on 9 April the National Council of the Socialist Party unanimously approved the idea of holding such a primary in early December. The same day, Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV) adopted a motion saying that it would "welcome with interest" such a primary, but withheld formal support. On 18 June, the National Council finally confirmed that it would organize a primary to select a candidate for the 2017 presidential election. Applications could be submitted from 1 to 15 December, with two rounds of voting planned for 22 and 29 January 2017. Under the rules of the primary, candidates of the PS, Radical Party of the Left (PRG), and pro-government ex-EELV forces – i.e., the Ecologist Party (PE) and Union of Democrats and Ecologists (UDE) – in addition to all those who supported the primary process.

The PRG suspended its participation in the Belle Alliance populaire (BAP) of left-wing forces on 29 June 2016, denouncing the Socialist Party's unilateral decision to run a primary, and arguing that the BAP should not become a "simple satellite movement of the Socialist Party". On 2 July, the delegates of the BAP unanimously approved the organization of the primary. The PRG voted to support the candidacy of its party leader Sylvia Pinel, outside the primary, on 26 November, but on 6 December Pinel announced that she would ultimately run in the primary of the left, a decision the party's steering committee confirmed on 14 December. Prospective PS candidates were required to sign the primary's charter of ethics requiring candidates to rally behind its winner and to secure the support of 5% of one of the following groups: members of the National Council; Socialist parliamentarians, regional and departmental Socialist councilors in at least 4 regions and 10 departments; or Socialist mayors representing more than 10,000 people in at least 4 regions and 10 departments. The conditions for becoming a candidate of other member parties of the BAP – the PRG, UDE, PE, and Democratic Front (FD) – were determined by the respective parties' leadership.

The EELV declared on 20 June that it would not participate in the primary, and the French Communist Party (PCF) did likewise the following day. After declaring his candidacy for the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron of En Marche! also declined to participate, as did Jean-Luc Mélenchon under the banner of La France Insoumise, saying that he did not want to run in a primary with François Hollande since he would not be able to support Hollande if he won. He later reaffirmed this by saying that with the exclusion of the EELV and PRG the primary was not truly "of the left" but a "primary of the Socialist Party". On 1 December, Hollande declared that he would not seek a second term, becoming the first President of the Fifth Republic to renounce a reelection bid. His announcement reflected his high personal unpopularity and resentment among Socialist colleagues regarding remarks he made about cabinet members and other associates in the book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça... (A president should not say that...) by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, journalists at Le Monde.

On 17 December, the High Authority of the open primary declared that seven candidates qualified to appear on the ballot, including four from the Socialist Party – former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Arnaud Montebourg, Benoît Hamon, and Vincent Peillon – the other three being François de Rugy of the PE, Sylvia Pinel of the PRG, and Jean-Luc Bennahmias of the PD.

Candidacies

Former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, who also ran for the nomination of the Socialists in 2011, was one of the first to declare interest in a speech at Mont Beuvray on 16 May 2016, widely viewed as indicating his interest in running for the presidency, in which he issued a "call" to "build" a "great alternative project for France" to an audience of 200 Socialist Party militants. Among those in attendance were former minister Aurélie Filippetti, as well as MPs Christian Paul, chief among the party's rebels, having had a part in the foundation of the New Socialist Party caucus along with Montebourg, Laurent Baumel and Patrice Prat. Montebourg officially declared his candidacy on 16 August, decrying Hollande's betrayal of the "ideals of the left" in Frangy-en-Bresse in his home département of Saône-et-Loire, and laid out an anti-globalization campaign platform based on protectionism for French businesses, threats to nationalize predatory banks, and tax breaks for the middle class, themes which became central to his campaign. These themes were reflective of his combative tenure as economy minister, in which he threatened to nationalize divisions of ArcelorMittal and attempted but ultimately failed to prevent General Electric's partial acquisition of French multinational Alstom.

Former French education minister Benoît Hamon, another founder of the New Socialist Party caucus, declared his candidacy on the same day, arguing that Hollande could "no longer earn the French people's trust" and proposed to raise the minimum wage, to further reduce the 35-hour workweek instituted by the Socialists in 2000 to 32 hours, a €35 billion stimulus for the French economy, and legalizing marijuana. His signature campaign plan, however, was his intention to introduce a €300–400 billion universal basic income program funded by a tax on robots, equivalent to a monthly income of approximately €750 per person. Like Montebourg, he was ejected from the Socialist government by prime minister Manuel Valls in a wider purge of left-wing dissenters after the fall of the First Valls Government in August 2014. On 1 December 2016, incumbent President François Hollande announced in a televised address from the Élysée Palace that he would not seek a second term in office, clearing the way for Valls to enter the race, who subsequently announced his candidacy on 5 December.

Valls, Montebourg, and Hamon ultimately became the main three contenders for the Socialist nomination, but several other candidates ultimately participated in the primary. Former Minister of National Education Vincent Peillon made a late bid to become the Socialist nominee, announcing his candidacy on 11 December, returning from a two-and-a-half-year residency in Switzerland in which he taught philosophy at the University of Neuchâtel and wrote novels; his bid contrasts with those of Montebourg and Hamon, representing the mainstream Socialist Party as opposed to its left-wing rebels. Three other candidates, not of the Socialist Party, also ran in the primary as members of the parties of la Belle Alliance Populaire, a left-wing grouping. Among these were MP François de Rugy, representing the Ecologist Party which he founded along with Senator Jean-Vincent Placé after leaving the EELV in August 2015 over concerns about the party pandering to its left wing; Sylvia Pinel of the Radical Party of the Left (PRG), and Jean-Luc Bennahmias, who left the Democratic Movement to found his own centre-left party, the Democratic Front.

Several other candidates also filed petitions to run in the primary, including Senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, Gérard Filoche, Fabien Verdier, and Pierre Larrouturou. Despite initially contemplating running, Lienemann decided not to run in the primary on 9 December, worried about the splitting of votes between candidates of the party's left wing – Montebourg and Hamon – and urging them to unite forces. Although she stated that she faced pressure to withdraw her candidacy, these pressures were not a factor in her recusal from the primary. Filoche, a trade unionist, failed to secure the necessary number of sponsors to enter the primary (though he attempted to lodge a challenge against the decision of the High Authority), as did Verdier. Both men claimed that, because they represented other left-wing parties (Parti politique Filoche2017 and Convictions, respectively), they were not bound by the requirement to seek sufficient support, as with Pinel, de Rugy, and Bennahmias; nevertheless, the decision to exclude both was reaffirmed. Larrouturou's application was rejected because his New Deal party was not a member of the left-wing alliance for the primary, as were those of Bastien Faudot of the Citizen and Republican Movement and Sébastien Nadot of the Movement of Progressives.

Campaign + Polling: Who was the most convincing candidate during this debate? Debate Poll source Among all respondents Among left-wing sympathizers Valls Montebourg Hamon Valls Montebourg Hamon 1 Elabe* 26% 29% 20% 28% 23% 27% Odoxa** 27% 33% 20% 34% 25% 27% Harris** 29% 20% 22% 31% 17% 32% 2 Elabe* 26% 29% 25% 28% 24% 30% Harris** 23% 30% 26% 27% 24% 36% 3 Elabe* 21% 28% 29% 24% 23% 34% OpinionWay* 19% 20% 24% 25% 23% 32% Harris** 24% 26% 28% 25% 26% 34% * conducted among viewers of the debate** among those aware of the debateexcluding "none of these candidates"among those intending to vote in the primary as opposed to left-wing sympathizers

The unpopularity of incumbent president Hollande led to widespread speculation as to whether he would choose to run for re-election, facing fierce competition within his own party in the Socialist primary; when he ultimately renounced his candidacy on 1 December 2016, he cleared the way for prime minister Manuel Valls to enter the field on 5 December. Valls, considered the "natural successor" to Hollande and whose attempts to modernize the Socialist Party have been characterized as similar to those of Tony Blair with the British Labour Party, earned a reputation for his law-and-order approach as prime minister, instituting business-friendly supply-side reforms and taking a tough position on migration, at one point even questioning whether Islam was compatible with the French Republic; all these views placed him well to the right wing of his party. Valls' important role in Hollande's government resulted in him becoming similarly unpopular, even within his own party and on the left.