Voting started on Sunday in Venezuela in a presidential poll that is widely expected to give another six-year term to incumbent President Hugo Chavez.

The voting, which started at 6:00 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) in around 11,118 polling stations in all 23 states plus capital Caracas, will end at 4:00 p.m. (2000 GMT).

Preliminary results are to be announced three hours later, initial results are expected to come out late Sunday or early Monday. There is only one round of voting, and the one who garners the largest number of the votes is the winner.

President Chavez and opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, a local state governor, are the two leading contenders for the top job. Most recent public opinion polls showed Chavez was favored with a solid lead over Rosales and was set to win the elections.

Chavez, 52, has vowed to push ahead with social programs that have won him applause among the poor Venezuelans who had played a key role in giving him a landslide electoral victory in 1998 and again in 2000.

Rosales, who was the governor of the western Zulia state, Venezuela's wealthiest state, has struggled in uniting the deeply fractured opposition in the country. He promised to redistribute Venezuela's oil riches and to roll back Chavez policies.

Rosales stepped down temporarily from his post as a governor to run for the presidency. Should he lose the election, he will return to Zulia and govern the state until 2008.

Source: Xinhua