Segolene Royal won the overwhelming backing of France's Socialists in her bid to become France's first female president, suggesting the party is now ready to put aside internal divisions in its bid to recapture power.

Royal won 60.62 percent of votes in Thursday's ballot, with Dominique Strauss-Kahn far behind on 20.83 percent and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius on 18.54 percent.

"To be chosen in this way is something extraordinary," Royal said as results were coming in early Friday. "I want to embody this change and make it credible and legitimate. I think that tonight this legitimacy has been given to me."

Her victory over two male rivals from the party's elite avoided the need for a runoff vote, and gave her — and her long-struggling opposition party — a running start in the tough campaign for presidential elections in April.

"All the Socialists have won," party leader Francois Hollande, who is also Royal's partner, said Friday.

"Now the Socialists have a candidate and ... we must win against the right," Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who came in second behind Royal in Thursday's three-way-race, said Friday on RTL radio.

The vote also elevated Royal from a poll darling accused of lacking political gravitas to a presidential candidate — and brought her closer than any woman in history to France's top job.

The Socialists are rife with divisions that stained the unprecedented American-style campaign leading up to the "primary" vote Thursday. But her solid victory suggested that the party is ready to put differences aside to fight the right — and its front-runner, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

"She's the only one who can really unify the left, and the only one who could beat Sarkozy, the right, and the extreme right," said Florian Liscouet, a 19-year-old student voting in Paris.

Royal now faces a formidable challenge.

"She was on the training ground, and now she enters the big stadium," former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a member of the ruling conservative party UMP, said on Europe-1 radio Friday. He cast doubt on her abilities to withstand the fight.

Royal angered many in her party by appealing directly to voters and distancing herself from Socialist party line. She cast doubt on the 35-hour workweek, a landmark Socialist policy, and suggested military training for troubled youth.

"She represents a breath of fresh air for the French. She's really listening to them and their problems," Liscouet said, echoing sentiments of many Royal followers who say her attitude more than her policies won them over.

The success of Royal's tactics suggests that the French Socialists are the latest to shift away from Europe's traditional leftist roots, following Britain's Labour Party transformation under Tony Blair and Italian Premier Romano Prodi's move toward the center.

The Socialists, who dominated the French political scene a generation ago, have been searching for direction since former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's embarrassing third-place finish in the last presidential vote, in 2002.

"There is a will to change politics as it is done today in France," the French Socialist Party's No. 2 official, Francois Rebsamen, said Friday on Europe-1 radio.

He described the Socialists' campaign, which opened up the party's former closed-door decision-making to the public with televised debates and Thursday's well-advertised vote, as "a good lesson in democracy."

Despite Royal's maverick stance, she remains a leftist who wants to punish companies who shift jobs abroad and has suggested obligatory labor union membership. She supports gay marriage and adoption and has never married Hollande, the father of her four children.

Critics say the Socialists have no feasible recipes for facing a globalizing economy. The party manifesto calls for expanding use of the much-maligned 35-hour workweek law and re-nationalizing utility Electricite de France.

Royal has shaken up the political scene in a nation disenchanted and in need of change. Many say a woman president is the tonic needed.

"That would do us some good," said Socialist Philippe Chleq, 72, one of the 68,000 party members who have joined since June, after voting. "There is so much machismo in politics, it's disgusting. She'll help change that."