The new prime minister of France Francois Bayrou takes office with the lowest popularity rating ever recorded, with 66% of French people dissatisfied, according to a poll published today.

Just 34% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the new, centrist prime minister appointed on December 13, according to the Ifop-JDD survey in Journal du Dimanche.

Ifop, which has been conducting polls for decades, said that until 1959 and the appointment of Michel Debret, no French prime minister had such a low popularity rating immediately after taking office.

Bayrou was appointed prime minister by the French president Emmanuel Macron after long discussions to find a successor to Michel Barnier, whose government collapsed after a motion of censure just three months after taking office.

Bayrou is the sixth prime minister to take over since Macron was first elected to the presidency in 2017, and the fourth in 2024. He hopes to form a government in the coming days in order to draw up a budget, but it will not be easily approved by the French National Assembly.

An indication of the difficulties he is about to face is the rate of dissatisfaction he is accumulating, which is much higher than that of Barnier in September 2024 (55%), of Gabriel Atal in January 2024 (46%) and of Elizabeth Bourne in May 2022 (43%).

The poll was conducted online from December 11 to 18 among a sample of 2,004 people aged 18 and over.