ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION<br/> <br />Socialist candidate and frontrunner in the French election race, Francois Hollande casts his vote in his hometown of Tulle in the first round of the presidential election.<br/> <br />Opinion polls have given the challenger a double-digit lead over French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a May 6 runoff.<br/> <br />Sarkozy moved briefly into the lead in polls for the first round on April 22 following his handling of a shooting drama in south-western France in March, but he has slipped back again in more recent polls and the runoff gap has widened.<br/> <br />Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon and centrist Francois Bayrou rank in third, fourth and fifth place for the April 22 first round between 10 candidates.<br/> <br />57-year-old Hollande promises less drastic spending cuts than Sarkozy and wants higher taxes on the wealthy to fund state-aided job creation, in particular a 75 percent upper tax rate on income above 1 million euros (1.32 million U.S. dollars).<br/> <br />He would become France's first left-wing president since Francois Mitterrand, who beat incumbent Valery Giscard d'Estaing in 1981.
