AFP
French polls close
PARIS (AFP) – Polling stations closed across France Sunday for the final round of a presidential election that estimations said gave victory to Socialist challenger Francois Hollande over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.
Hollande was elected France’s first Socialist president in nearly two decades, dealing a humiliating defeat to Sarkozy and shaking up European politics, according to several estimates based on ballot samples.
The estimates said Hollande took between 51.8 percent and 52 percent.
The result will have major implications for Europe as it struggles to emerge from a financial crisis and for France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.
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