Participation rate up at midday in second round of French center-right presidential primaries

Thierry Solere, president of the committee organizing the Les Republicains party vote, told BFM TV that the figures showed that 1.27 million votes had been cast, according to a count of 67 percent of polling stations in the country.

"It marks a rise of between 10-15 percent," said Solere. Some 4.4 million people had voted by the time polls closed last Sunday.

Former prime minister Francois Fillon won the first round, putting him in pole position to beat Alain Juppe - another former prime minister and current mayor of Bordeaux - and become the center-right Les Republicains presidential candidate.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Andrew Callus)