PARIS ? Former French Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande declared victory Sunday in the party's presidential primary, urging the left to unite around his bid to unseat embattled conservative Nicolas Sarkozy in elections next year.
Hollande, a 57-year-old moderate known more as a behind-the-scenes consensus-builder than a visionary, is seen by many as a welcome contrast to the tough-talking, hard-driving Sarkozy. Opinion polls say Hollande is the leftists' best chance to win the presidency for the first time since 1988.
Sunday's vote for the main opposition party's presidential nominee comes at a time when many French citizens are worried about high state debt, cuts to education spending, anemic economic growth and lingering unemployment.
With 2.2 million votes counted after Sunday's run-off voting, the Socialist Party said 56 percent of the ballots were for Hollande and 44 percent for his challenger Martine Aubry, who had succeeded Hollande as Socialist Party leader.
The party estimates that more than 2.7 million people voted in Sunday's run-off.
"I note with pride and responsibility the vote tonight, which ... gives me the large majority I had sought," Hollande told supporters in party headquarters as results rolled in.
He said the victory gives him "strength and legimitacy" to take on Sarkozy, who is widely expected to seek a second five-year term in elections in April and May.
Hollande pledged to reverse Sarkozy-era cuts in school funding and defend "equality and progress" at a time when many voters in France ? and around the world ? are angry over economic troubles and the sway that financial markets hold over politics.
Aubry quickly conceded defeat. She had sought to be France's first female president.
"I warmly congratulate Francois Hollande, who is clearly ahead. His victory is unquestionable," said Aubry, famed for authoring France's 35-hour workweek law.
The bespectacled Hollande was the longtime partner of the Socialists' last presidential candidate, Segolene Royal. The two split after Royal's 2007 presidential defeat to Sarkozy but stood side-by-side during Hollande's victory speech Sunday.
Sarkozy's favorability ratings have hovered near the 30-percent level for months, but he is a strong campaigner and senses a rightward-majority tilt in the French electorate.
Sarkozy's allies urged Hollande to come out with clearer positions on the main issues that concern the French. Valerie Rosso-Debord of Sarkozy's UMP party dismissed the Socialist Party's jobs proposals and spending plans as "unrealistic and costly."
"The French should know that none of this will stand up, and at the end, they will have to pay the bill," she said Sunday night.
Early this year, most polls showed that the Socialists' best hope for toppling Sarkozy was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who led the International Monetary Fund until he was jailed in May in the United States on charges he tried to rape a New York hotel maid.
Prosecutors later dropped the case, but Strauss-Kahn's reputation and presidential ambitions crashed.
Hollande says trimming state debt is a priority, but has kept to Socialist party dogma on issues such as shielding citizens from the whims of the financial markets and raising taxes on the rich.
The party's nominee will face questions about how to keep France competitive at a time when sluggish growth has reined in state spending and emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil keep booming.
Hollande is little-known outside of France and has provided no dramatic proposals for saving the euro, shrinking debts, solving tensions with immigrants or other French woes.
"There's no cause for celebration: This is just the third quarter," said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist leader in the National Assembly. "Now, the presidential election begins."
The U.S.-styled primary, the first of its kind in France, was designed in part to help Socialists overcome years of dissension in their ranks. It was open to voters beyond those in the party, though some conditions applied.
Hollande, the top vote-getter in the first round of voting a week ago, received expressions of support from all four candidates who didn't make it to Sunday's runoff.
Royal ? who ran against Hollande, the father of her four children, in the first round ? hailed Sunday's early result, saying it conferred "great legitimacy that the right cannot question."
Starting with Charles de Gaulle in 1958, France has had a string of conservative presidents over the past half-century, but only one Socialist: Francois Mitterrand.
In Paris' touristic and bohemian Montmartre neighborhood, voters streamed steadily into one polling station at an elementary school near the Sacre Coeur basilica. Several said their priority was unseating Sarkozy, but personality and gender also counted.
"It'd be great to have a woman president," said Michelle Joly, 44, an unemployed former human resources director, who voted for Aubry. "The programs of Aubry and Hollande are a bit 'six of one, half a dozen of the other.' And in fact. I'd probably have more negative things to say about Aubry, but I still voted for her."
Joly's husband, Jean Audouard, however, voted for Hollande.
"I like his ability to unite, his humor, and feel he's less left-leaning than Martine Aubry: I'm center-left," said the 50-year-old school director, while agreeing that the incumbent president needs to go.
"I think Sarkozy isn't suited to France today ? he's not a unifier at a time when we need cohesion," he added. "I think Francois Hollande is good. He is a bit soft but he's really nice, and quite funny ? and that counts."
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Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet, Cecile Brisson and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
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