This article discusses the 2017 elections in the context of a framework of analysis based on three levels of analysis: the institutional, the partisan and the situational. The framework used not only elucidates the extraordinary campaign and results, but places them in a diachronic perspective in order to assess the claim that the 2017 electoral series marked a partisan realignment. The 2017 campaign rewrote almost all of the rules associated with the presidential election. If Macron’s election provides a window of opportunity to revive the French presidency, the question of political and institutional trust is far from resolved.