ASTANA, December 4 (RIA Novosti) - A total of 60.08% of electors cast their votes by 4:00 p.m. local time (10:00 a.m. GMT) in a presidential election in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan this Sunday, the Kazakh central election commission said.
More than 5 million electors out of the 8.8 million registered voters came to the polling stations, the commission said. The electoral turnout was 53.88% in the capital of Astana and 33.66% in the republic's biggest city of Almaty, the commission said.
A total of five candidates are running for presidency, including the incumbent leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has run the republic since 1989, and the opposition leader Zharmakhan Tyukbai.
The polls will be valid with any electoral turnout. The central election commission will draw up the election's first preliminary results in the first half of the day, December 5. A candidate must gain more than 50% of the votes to win the election.
