French left votes for Socialist presidential candidate

Francois Hollande is favourite to win

Left-wing voters in France are taking part in the second round of a US-style primary to decide the Socialist Party's presidential election candidate.

They will choose between former party leader Francois Hollande and current leader Martine Aubry, who came first and second in the first voting round.
Mr Hollande is the clear favourite having received 39% to Ms Aubry's 31% of the vote last Sunday.
Opinion polls suggest either candidate could beat President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The incumbent president is widely expected to run for re-election in April, although he has not yet declared.
Mr Hollande became the new favourite after the withdrawal of previous front-runner Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former head of the International Monetary Fund who was arrested in New York earlier this year on suspicion of attempted rape, a charge later dropped.
Personality and electability For the first time, any registered elector willing to pay a one-euro fee and sign a pledge that they recognise the values of the Socialist Party have been entitled to vote for their presidential candidate.
Some 2.7 million people voted in the first round, which reduced the number of candidates from six to two.

Martine Aubry has one advantage over her rival - she has served as a minister

Mr Hollande, a bespectacled 57-year-old who served as Socialist Party leader for more than a decade but has never held a national government post, took the lead and has since had the endorsement of the four candidates who were knocked out.
That should easily be enough to put him ahead of Martine Aubry, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says.
Ms Aubry, 61, is the current Socialist Party chief and mayor of the northern city of Lille. The daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors, she served as labour minister during the late 1990s during which she introduced France's 35-hour working week.
In terms of policy, there is very little to separate the two contenders, our correspondent says.
They are both from the party's mainstream, and have both helped put together its political programme - which calls for the creation of 300,000 public sector jobs for young people and the reduction to 60 of the legal retirement age.
So, the choice for Sunday's voters is more about personality and electability, and the fact that Mr Hollande has been given a much bigger lead may be enough for many on the left, our correspondent says.