The article raises a quite important issue, hardly present in Polish scientific literaturę – the relation between presidential elections and the party system. This is an attempt to show how the party indicates the presidential candidate in the elections and at the same time a tentative to answer the question: how the results of the presidential elections translates into the score of the parliamentary one. Political parties, as organizations, attach too little attention to internal democracy and to how personal decisions are made. The article presents a solution proposal based on the example of France. For the parties a lot more important is the time elapsed between the elections and what was the outcome than the candidate himself. The article is in fact a qualitative research and was limited to Polish material, but too few election held allows us only you to identify some trends or possible impacts – but does not allow a broader generalization.