This paper explores the discourses of popular and national sovereignty, taking France as a case study. In the run up to the 2022 presidential election, French political environment is characterized by increasing polarization, fostered among other causes by the flamboyant candidacy of Éric Zemmour and his far-right party ‘Reconquête!’. How do ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ relate to each other in contemporary French politics? How does the idea of sovereignty connect to the discourse of popular and national community? What are the democratic implications of different ideas about the sovereign political subject? Drawing on a multimodality approach, this paper focuses on the discursive repertories of populist and nationalist politics by offering insights on how the ideas of popular and national sovereignty are framed by left-wing (Mélanchon), centrist (Macron), and far-right leaders (Zemmour, Le Pen). Discourse analysis will be applied to different sources, such as social media, key speeches, and electoral programmes and publications. Building on such discourse analysis, this paper explores the theoretical consequences of how different conceptions of sovereignty lead to different ideas and practices of democratic politics. More specifically, this paper stresses the ways in which the ‘boundary problem’ is discursively shaped, and it investigates whether and how this leads to both “exclusionary” and “inclusionary” forms of politics.