By Brian Love
PARIS (Reuters) - Francois Hollande led in early partial results of the French Socialist Party's presidential primary election, with Hollande's score topping 56 percent versus less than 44 percent for Martine Aubry.
The winner of Sunday's primary will run in the presidential election next April where the Socialists hope to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy and put a Socialist back in the Elysee Palace for the first time in 17 years.
Hollande led rival Aubry based on just short of 500,000 votes in a poll where the total number of votes cast was expected to be around of 2.7 million.
Barring an upset as the night wears on, that left Hollande, a moderate left-winger, poised to win the Socialist ticket to run in a presidential election that was last won by a Socialist in 1988, when the late Francois Mitterrand was re-elected.
Hollande has never held a national government post, unlike former labour minister Aubry, architect of France's 35-hour working week and daughter of the former European Commission President Jacques Delors.
The polls suggest French voters are ready to put the left back in the Elysee Palace after 17 years of conservative presidents, including the unpopular Sarkozy, who is widely expected to seek a second five-year term.
The left's runaway favourite to become president had been former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn but his IMF career and presidential hopes foundered when he was arrested in New York in May on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. The charges have since been dropped.
The ease with which Hollande and Aubry both filled his shoes suggests that many voters are simply weary of Sarkozy and his economic policies.
CONCILIATORY NOTE
The Socialist Party has organised a two-round contest where anyone who pays a euro and declares allegiance to left-wing values can vote.
More than 2.6 million people voted in the first-round last Sunday, when anti-globalisation hardliner Arnaud Montebourg scored a surprise 17 percent. Socialist Party chief Harlem Desir said turnout for the runoff on a sunny Sunday across most of France appeared to have risen about 6 percent.
Hollande, who promised in the final days of campaigning to crack down on banks and financial market excess, consolidated his position by securing the support of the four contenders knocked out in round one, including Montebourg.
Hollande, seen by many as more centre left, won 39 percent of the first-round vote, versus 30 percent for Aubry, often labelled as a more old-school Socialist.
Among the four eliminated candidates who sided with him for the runoff was Segolene Royal, Hollande's former companion and mother of his four children.
Both Hollande and Aubry share the main tenets of a Socialist Party manifesto that promises to scrap 50 billion euros of tax breaks that mostly went to the wealthy under Sarkozy, using half of this money to fund state jobs and promote growth, with the rest to cut the deficit.
Sarkozy, who won power in 2007 after 12 years of fellow conservative Jacques Chirac, has yet to declare a re-election bid.
Opinion polls show him trailing either Hollande or Aubry in the election which takes place in two rounds on April 22 and May 6, followed weeks later by a parliamentary election.
(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Jon Boyle)
