The first thing to understand about next year’s presidential election in France is that it probably won’t go as you expect.

The last two contests have made a mockery of pundits: around this time in 2016, center-right former PM Alain Juppé of Les Républicains (LR) was the odds-on favorite to succeed François Hollande. Instead, that fall, he lost his party’s primary to the more conservative François Fillon, opening up space in the center for Emmanuel Macron to sneak into the second round. By this time in the year in 2011, the widely expected challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy was former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn — but sexual assault allegations in New York abruptly derailed his political career, opening the door for Hollande to win the Socialist Party (PS) primary.

Any unexpected drama this year will be taking place within a historically unstable political environment. Upended by Macron, the old equilibrium of the Fifth Republic no longer exists, even as its two main forces — the LR and PS — retain solid support on the local and regional levels. After Marine Le Pen’s record score in 2017, polls show the far-right National Rally (RN) in a strong position to compete for the presidency. And the parties of the Left remain as divided as ever, with a mix of political differences and competing interests keeping any national-level accord off the table for now, though an electoral pact between at least some of the parties is not inconceivable.