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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.

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.

Sarkozy’s favourability 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.
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. – AP.