I. Summary - health is a bigger concern for the French than for the candidates
Health now holds a central, non-negotiable place in what the French expect. Ahead of the 2027 presidential election, opinion studies confirm it: 76% of citizens consider protecting the health system a decisive factor in their future vote, ahead of improving purchasing power (66%), revaluing work (63%) or improving the education system (56%). One poll even shows that 7 in 10 French people (71%) believe health spending should not be cut, even if that means widening the public deficit.
Sources: Jean Jaurès, April 2026 · Elabe · Institut Montaigne · Ipsos
Yet, set against this widespread expectation, there is a marked contrast with the importance that candidates and potential candidates give to health when they speak on social media. As our cross-cutting Observatory shows, health ranks only among the 14 themes tracked, with just of candidates’ posts.
Health in 6 points
The essentials at a glance. The figures, theme by theme and candidate by candidate, are set out in the following sections.
The 5 areas at a glance
The candidates who speak most on the 5 selected themes.
II. Health study
Opportunistic communication, not a core subject
Monthly volume of health posts: statements react to institutional news rather than to an agenda of their own.
Peaks in communication are driven by the examination of the various PLFSS (Social Security financing bills), the work of the commission of inquiry on TikTok, and the announcements making mental health a national cause. The highest peak of the period remains spring 2025: the adoption at first reading of the private members’ bills on palliative care and assisted dying, a highly divisive and heavily covered subject.
Notably, even at the height of the Covid-19 health crisis, health failed to establish itself as a lasting, structural subject in candidates’ social media discourse.
The overall hierarchy of campaign issues
Average share of all candidates’ posts devoted to each major theme.
Seen through the overall hierarchy of campaign issues, the economy remains on average the most discussed theme, ahead of security, which is particularly central for Gérald Darmanin, consistent with his role as Keeper of the Seals and Minister of Justice. Health is generally neck and neck with education. For far-right candidates such as Jordan Bardella and Éric Zemmour, immigration far outweighs health and all other subjects.
Health ranks 10th among candidates
Rank of health among the 14 major campaign themes (cross-cutting Observatory).
Set against the 14 major campaign themes tracked by our cross-cutting Observatory, health ranks only 10th: it is clearly present in the debate, but remains far behind the priorities that dominate candidates’ speech (economy, security, immigration).
Delphine Batho speaks most about health on social media (13.5%)
Share of each candidate’s posts devoted to health (top 16).
Set against a candidate’s entire output, only two profiles truly stand out: Delphine Batho (13.5%) and Jérôme Guedj (11.5%). For all the other candidates in the top 16, the theme sits between 2% and 6% (Michel Barnier, lowest in the ranking, at 2.59%): they address the subject, but it is not the core of their editorial line.
Note that the order is reversed in Parliament, where Jérôme Guedj (1,562 health amendments) is well ahead of Delphine Batho (257).
Health is most often discussed through the lens of the economy
Co-occurrence of health posts with other registers (economy, security, education, environment, immigration).
In 50% of cases, health is discussed in isolation, as a subject in its own right. The other half of the time it is treated through a combined lens, mainly economic, state-related or security-related.
The cost of health attracts more interest than medical innovation
Breakdown of health posts by thematic angle (13 registers).
The most discussed themes (Top 3)
Finance / cost / Social Security (16%)
Hospitals & healthcare staff / public services (15%)
Environmental health / food (14%)
(Diseases / patients / disability follows closely, at 13%)
The most neglected themes (Flop 3)
Security / violence against healthcare staff (0.5%)
Women / perinatal care / sexual health (0.5%)
Immigration / State Medical Aid (AME) (1%)
Medical research & innovation (1%)
X (formerly Twitter) alone captures 61% of health posts (67,614 posts) and stands out as the network of first statements and hot reactions. Instagram comes far behind in volume (14%, 15,698 posts) but is well ahead of X on engagement: it is the network of impact and responsiveness. Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Bluesky remain little used for health issues. Of note: 12.4% of LinkedIn posts are about health (an expert, institutional register), well ahead of Facebook (7.5%) and Instagram (6.9%).
Candidates post on X, the audience reacts on Instagram
Volume of health posts by network (bars) and total engagement generated (line).
Volume and name recognition are not always correlated
A glaring gap between the candidates who produce the most health content and those who capture the most engagement.
The most prolific (volume of health posts)
The best performers (average engagement per health post)
Hyper-productive, little echo: the candidates who post most actively on health (Jérôme Guedj, Delphine Batho, Boris Vallaud, Ségolène Royal, Olivier Faure) end up generating very low average engagement per post: they rank between 17th and 29th out of 34.
The pure name-recognition effect: conversely, some candidates post far less on health but trigger much higher engagement with each statement (Raphaël Glucksmann, Marine Le Pen, Gabriel Attal, Jordan Bardella, Jean-Luc Mélenchon), driven by their follower numbers and their mastery of social media codes.
The perfect balance of high volume and high engagement: only 5 candidates manage it: Florian Philippot, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Marine Tondelier, François Ruffin and Clémentine Autain.
Engagement in line with political positioning
Candidates’ specialisation profile: each invests in the health areas that extend their political positioning.
Jérôme Guedj: structures & finance. The unavoidable leader on the institutional side: hospitals and public services, funding and Social Security, ethics and end of life.
Boris Vallaud: the ever-present generalist. A record for diversity, active on 7 themes at once; he leads the debates on access to care, medical deserts and mental health in particular.
Marine Tondelier: environmental and societal health. She speaks mainly on environmental health but also takes up less-discussed subjects such as women’s health and sexual health.
François Ruffin: the champion of the grassroots. Strongly focused on the human and social dimension, he leads on diseases / patients / disability, and is a solid second on hospitals and mental health.
F. Philippot & N. Dupont-Aignan: the sovereigntists. A near-monopoly on sovereignty, the pharmaceutical industry and vaccines (Philippot in the lead), as well as prevention and lifestyle (Dupont-Aignan in the lead).
David Lisnard & Michel Barnier: the mainstream right. Discreet on health as a whole, they nonetheless stand out in the niche of medical research & innovation (Lisnard in the lead), a subject largely neglected on the left.
Parliamentary activity on health (excluding social media)
Health questions and amendments tabled by candidates holding an active parliamentary mandate (source: Follaw).
| Candidate | Mandate | Questions | Amendments | Total health |
|---|
On parliamentary activity, Jérôme Guedj is far ahead of Delphine Batho, even though she dominates on social media: he tabled health amendments while Delphine Batho tabled over the period. The volume of public speech and institutional activity do not necessarily overlap.
III. The 5 major health themes
Hierarchy of the 5 major health themes
Beyond overall volume, how does each candidate position themselves on the 5 priority health sub-themes? Of the 34 candidates analysed, only 6 cover all 5 major areas; most specialise in one or two of them.
Breakdown of health posts across the 5 major areas.
Healthy ageing: a high number of posts and interactions
Volume of posts does not guarantee engagement: some less-covered themes provoke more reactions.
Volume of posts does not guarantee engagement. Environmental health has the highest number of posts (475) but generates only moderate engagement (311,025 interactions). Conversely, mental health, with half as many posts (239), approaches 600,000 interactions: engagement per post nearly 4 times higher. Access to care, although very present in political debate, ranks only 4th in interactions (around 160,000).
Mental health, a subject that mobilises strongly
Average engagement generated per post, by theme.
Overall, “e-health” does not attract a large number of interactions. Relative to the number of posts, however, average engagement per post is far higher than for “healthy ageing”. E-health and mental health are genuine successes: every message published on these themes generates a very high rate of reactions.
Conversely, posts on environmental health earn a much lower average engagement rate.
Form: what makes the difference on social media
Beyond substance, analysis of the best-performing health posts brings out clear good practices.
Good practices
Collaborations and influencers.
The post by Marine Tondelier alongside activist @camilleetienne_ for the PFAS law earned 13,358 likes. See the post →
Scale and call to action.
Posts that highlight massive milestones (“1 million signatures, 500,000 of them in 24 hours, against the Duplomb law”) work particularly well.
Intimate storytelling.
Mention a concrete case (“florists’ exposure to pesticides”): empathy is the prime driver of sharing.
Short, emotional format.
Text of fewer than 5 lines built around emotion or indignation (e.g. Jordan Bardella on Mercosur and agricultural sovereignty).
Concrete, embodied action.
Stage a real initiative (“Les Écologistes had the hair of 19 firefighters tested to detect whether PFAS were present”).
IV. Ecosystem: health influencers
Beyond posts, the graph of followings (accounts followed) of the 34 candidates on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky and TikTok identifies the health accounts that structure their information ecosystem, without requiring a single post for this analysis.
Who cites whom? Mentions by candidate
Number of posts by each candidate (column) citing a health organisation (row). Intensity = volume; candidates are ordered from the political left to the right.
Top health organisations cited; a mention is not an endorsement (e.g. Pfizer is cited mainly by vaccine-sceptic accounts).
Influential accounts followed by candidates
Mapping of the health influence ecosystem
Who follows whom: following links between candidates (left) and the most-followed health accounts (right). Candidate colours reflect their political family.