French Socialist Francois Hollande Wins Presidential Race

Paris, May 7, IRNA – The French Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won France's presidential runoff election on Sunday by beating President Nicolas Sarkozy by a clear margin. Hollande, who had led the conservative incumbent Sarkozy in polls for months, would become France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995. Polling institutes had predicted Hollande would win between 51.8 and 52.0 percent of the vote vis-à-vis Sarkozy's tally of between 48.0 and 48.2 percent./end