Infighting among France's centrist presidential candidates has split the mainstream vote and made a runoff between the far right's Marine Le Pen and the hard left's Jean-Luc Melenchon more likely, according to a Reuters report published on Friday.

Polls before next April's presidential election show Le Pen is nearly certain to qualify for a second-round runoff in May, and that Melenchon is consistently nudging ahead of the mainstream candidates. The centrist camp, which has carried French governments for most of the past decade, is now the part of the field that looks least settled.

Centre-right Edouard Philippe, President Emmanuel Macron's former prime minister, has so far been the centre's torchbearer. But his lacklustre campaign, voter weariness near the end of Macron's two terms, an explosive social and security context and challenges from within his own camp have hurt his polling, people in Macron's camp and political analysts told Reuters.

"There's panic on board because there was no scenario planned for this. They hadn't anticipated the cataclysm under way," said Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, a political communications specialist at Sciences Po. "The terrible thing is that he isn't cutting through," he added. "They didn't understand that you have to campaign. There's a kind of dilettantism."

Philippe has also drawn criticism for awkward interventions, including suggesting in a podcast that a newly elected president should ideally have three months to rest before taking office. Analysts say he is struggling to connect with voters at a time of rising political tension.

The numbers are stark. Philippe fell to 15% support in an IFOP-Fiducial poll for Le Figaro, a six-point drop since September, and that is below the 16.5% for Melenchon, who would have enough to qualify for a runoff against Le Pen. Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister and Philippe's main rival, stood at 13%, behind both Melenchon and Raphael Glucksmann, a mainstream centre-left candidate.

The anxiety has sharpened tensions between Philippe and Attal, who are locked in a battle over who should step aside for the centrist ticket. Under pressure from lawmakers in his camp to abandon his presidential ambitions and rally to Philippe, Attal irritated many Macron allies this week by reviving the idea of a broad centrist primary, a proposal critics say risks fuelling division when moderates can least afford it. Attal has leverage: as leader of Macron's Renaissance party, he controls the party machine's purse strings.

"It's catastrophic," said Jean-Baptiste Moreau, a former lawmaker from Macron's camp. "They are attacking one another in the media and they are both collapsing in the polls. We're heading straight towards an RN-LFI second round," he said, referring to Le Pen's National Rally and Melenchon's France Unbowed. "In the current state of opinion, I don't see how we avoid it."

The fragmentation stretches beyond the Philippe-Attal feud. On the centre-left, Glucksmann has gained ground after winning the Socialist primary. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former interior minister, and David Lisnard, the free-market mayor of Cannes, are targeting the same moderate electorate. Every additional contender splits the anti-Le Pen vote further.

Philippe's supporters say reports of his demise are premature. Laurent Marcangeli, a member of Philippe's Horizons party, acknowledged the polling setbacks but said the former prime minister remained the only centrist with a realistic path to the runoff. "He's still in the race for the second round and to prevent a Le Pen-Melenchon duel," Marcangeli said, adding that some polls put Attal in single digits.

Some Macron allies are openly questioning whether either man should carry on. They argue that any association with Macron, who is finishing his second term at record-low popularity, will weigh on a centrist candidate. "The two of them are collapsing," said Perrine Goulet, a lawmaker from the MoDem party allied with Macron. "Any candidate who has been in a Macron government is going to be struggling."

Goulet called on moderates to put aside personal ambitions and rally behind a single contender able to unite supporters of Glucksmann through to Retailleau. "We're calling on everyone to put their egos aside and find the best candidate," she said. "If we keep Glucksmann on one side, Retailleau on the other, Edouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal, we'll end up with an LFI-RN second round. The danger is simply too great."

France votes in two rounds: the April first round narrows the field and the May runoff decides the presidency, which is why a split centre is so costly. With Philippe at 15%, Melenchon at 16.5% and Attal at 13%, the arithmetic already points to a Le Pen-Melenchon runoff; Glucksmann's gain after the Socialist primary and the Retailleau-Lisnard rivalry on the right split the moderate vote further. Related coverage on this site includes the Georgia rally where Obama mocked Trump's Oval Office decor, the Fed's survey of household finances and UK business investment data.

The limits are important. The polling figures come from a single IFOP-Fiducial survey for Le Figaro, reported by Reuters and republished by US News and Asharq Al-Awsat; both sources carry the same wire copy, so this is one reporting line rather than two independent accounts. The election is months away, no votes have been cast, and the centrist field could still consolidate. What the reporting establishes is the direction of travel: Le Pen is close to a runoff, Melenchon is gaining, and the centre is losing ground while it argues with itself.