Seven months from a presidential election, France voted today for the opposition Socialist Party's candidate, with Francois Hollande expected to be selected.
Polls show Mr Hollande beating Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to seek re-election, to become the first Socialist premier in the Elysee Palace for 17 years.
The main opposition party hopes the country's first open-door primary will lend its candidate legitimacy, particularly valuable after a scandal forced its heavyweight candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to quit the race.
The party hopes several million will participate in a vote that was restricted in the past to about 200,000 party members in the country of 63 million people.
"It's not expensive to get rid of Sarkozy," Mr Hollande said before today's ballot, where he is competing with five others including his former partner and the mother of his four children, Segolene Royal.
Mr Hollande's closest rival is Martine Aubry, labour minister from 1997 to 2002 when a left-wing government last held office.
Opinion polls show Mr Hollande, a witty if unexciting party veteran who has never been a government minister, will not only win the primary but will defeat Mr Sarkozy by a comfortable margin if the two face off in the presidential battle next April.
Voting started today in nearly 10,000 polling stations in France, abroad and in overseas territories for any voter willing to pay a euro and sign up to Socialist tenets.
The novelty of the primary contest, which goes to a second round next Sunday if the winner does not command an outright majority, may give the Socialists a boost if it generates a healthy turnout and a clear-cut winner, political analysts say.
Jean-Pierre Mignard, the lawyer in charge of overseeing the the vote, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper he expected two million voters to show up despite rain across France.
Polling stations will close at this evening and results are expected later tonight.
Millions have tuned into live television debates between the Socialist candidates in the past three weeks as the novelty of the primary appears to have captured the popular imagination.
Mr Sarkozy's UMP party, which criticised the Socialists' motives for the innovation at the outset, are considering doing the same, not in time for the upcoming presidential election but the one after it, according to prime minister Francois Fillon.
If opinion polls are correct, Mr Sarkozy remains highly unpopular and voters are ready to see the left take power. Parliamentary elections will be held on the heels of the presidential election, with the first ballot on April 22nd and the run-off on May 6th.
The front runners in today's contest have sparred regularly but gently about policy alternatives but not the need to reduce France's public deficit.
Their party manifesto established the basic thrust of their policy, which is to repeal €50 billion of tax breaks introduced under Mr Sarkozy, using half of that money to cut the deficit and the other half to promote jobs and economic growth.
Reuters