Hollande victorious in tight French vote

The French turned out Sunday for a vote tipped to make Nicolas Sarkozy the latest European leader ousted by economic crisis and Francois Hollande the country's first Socialist president in nearly two decades.

The last opinion polls published put Hollande ahead -- but with Sarkozy narrowing the gap slightly in the closing straight -- as voters punish the right-wing incumbent for failing to slash stubbornly high unemployment.

Victory for Hollande would mean a shift in direction for the European Union as the Socialist has promised to renegotiate the bloc's fiscal pact -- which he accuses of stifling economies -- to make it focus more on growth.

Dark grey skies and rain showers greeted voters across much of France, but turnout was high by recent standards in a highly political country today split roughly 50-50 between left-leaning and right-leaning camps.

Hollande voted early in his adopted hometown Tulle, in the rural backwoods of the central Correze region, accompanied by girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler and welcomed by a crowd of supporters and journalists from around the globe.

"It's going to be a long day," he said. "I don't know if it's going to be a good day -- that's for the French to decide -- but for a portion of them it will obviously be a good day, and not for the others."

Sarkozy and his former supermodel wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy voted at a high school in Paris' chic 16th district followed by a dense pack of photographers and acclaimed by a well-heeled crowd gathered behind street barriers.

The Socialists were setting up a stage on Place de la Bastille in Paris, where Francois Mitterrand came to give a victory speech when he was elected president in 1981.

On Place de la Concorde, where Sarkozy delivered a speech after winning the 2007 election, a few television crews were in place but there was no sign of a stage being built.

More than 46 million voters were eligible to take part, and around 80 percent of them were expected to do so. Polling was to close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) and an estimated result was to be given immediately afterwards.

Turnout was high but not at record levels with three hours to go before all voting stations shut, hitting 71.96 percent at 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) according to interior ministry figures.

The French vote coincides with an election in Greece, where voters were also predicted to punish the incumbent parties for landing the country in its bleak economic state.

Anger over sputtering economies has brought down leaders from Ireland to Portugal since the debt crisis washed over the European continent.

Hollande campaigned as a consensus-building moderate focused on restoring economic growth and is seen as on course to become France's first Socialist president since Mitterrand left office in 1995.

Sarkozy has trailed consistently in opinion polls for the last six months, but fought a bruising campaign focused on mobilising voters fearful that immigration and globalisation threaten the French way of life.

Final opinion polls conducted on Friday before campaigning was officially suspended for the weekend suggested the still energetic Sarkozy may have closed the gap on the frontrunner to as little as four percent.

But a complete turnaround would still constitute a surprise, and Hollande was expected to assume the leadership of France, the eurozone's second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Even before polls opened on the mainland, more than a million had voted in overseas territories and consulates in foreign cities with a large French expatriate population, with turnout slightly higher than in the first round.

France has a strict ban on publishing result estimates until all polls close, but foreign media websites are expected to publish estimates before then, and these will spread quickly via Twitter and Facebook.

Anyone breaking the law on sharing early estimates faces a fine of 75,000 euros (100,000 dollars), but French citizens got around the restriction in the first round by using code words and the Twitter hashtag îRadioLondres.

Hollande won the first round with 28.63 percent of the votes to Sarkozy's 27.18 percent, and the candidates -- who are both aged 57 -- have been fighting for the votes of those whose candidates failed to make the run-off.

Far-right anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen, who won almost 18 percent in the first round, said she had cast a blank ballot, and observers expected many of her supporters to do the same.

"The two remaining candidates are political Siamese twins, so I'm not expecting very much from the result," she said after voting in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, where she is a regional councillor.

The polling institute Ifop, however, forecasts that 55 percent of her voters would back Sarkozy and 19 percent Hollande.

Hollande needs a strong mandate to implement his programme to counter EU-driven austerity, while Sarkozy has played on fears that the election of a Socialist would send shudders through the EU and the financial markets.

Whoever wins will next have to build a parliamentary majority after June's legislative elections, but the formal handover of presidential power is expected on or around May 15 -- in any case before May 17.

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