Spain's parliamentary elections kicked off Sunday as voters began to cast their ballots to elect anew Congress and Senate after four years of rule by the socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Voting at mainland polling stations began at 9 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) and will end at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT). In the Canary Islands to the west, voting is to begin and end an hour later. Results are expected late Sunday.
Surveys conducted before polling day showed that Zapatero's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the opposition Popular Party (PP) led by Mariano Rajoy were running neck and neck.
At stake are 350 seats in Congress, the lower house of parliament and 208 seats of the 264-member Senate, the upper house.
Another 56 Senate seats will be decided by indirect elections by the parliaments of Spain's 17 autonomous regions.
Results for the lower house will determine which party will lead the next government. Neither the PSOE nor the PP is expected to win more than 50 percent of the seats.
Following the 2004 elections, Zapatero's party was 12 seats short of an absolute majority in the lower house. He has ruled for the past four years with the support of smaller regional and left-wing parties.
Both Zapatero and Rajoy focused their campaign on the economy as the country is experiencing a sudden slowdown after three years of robust growth.
The bursting of the real estate bubble has put hundreds of thousands of jobs in danger, particularly in the construction sector.
Unemployment and inflation have been on the rise in recent months.
Another hotly-debated issue was terrorism. The government's failed negotiations with the Basque separatist group ETA have become an easy target for the conservatives' attacks.
On Friday, Isaias Carrasco, a former councilor from the ruling PSOE, was shot dead near his home in the Basque town of Mondragon. There have been no claims of responsibility for the shooting while the Spanish government blamed ETA for the murder.
The assassination forced political parties to curtail their campaigns.
On Sunday, in the polling station where Zapatero cast his ballots, 84-year-old Alfonso voted for his rival, Rajoy.
"I don't care about politics. But I want Spain to be a unified country," Alfonso, who would only reveal his first name, told Xinhua.
"I voted the PP because the government has been soft on ETA," he added.
Zapatero's social policies over the past four years, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage and legislation that made divorce easier, have also angered the PP.
Rajoy cast his ballots in a school in a suburb of Madrid at around 11 a.m. (0900 GMT). Rajoy was warmly greeted by his supporters in the polling station. He talked briefly to the media before leaving.
Rajoy's Popular Party suffered a surprising defeat in 2004 elections, which were held three days after terrorist bombings of Madrid commuter trains killed 191 people.
Voters were angered by the then PP government's insistence that the bombings were carried out by ETA despite growing evidence that they were authored by Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaida.
The Madrid bombings were thought to be a revenge of al-Qaida for the Spanish government's support of the Iraq War. Former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar from the PP was a staunch ally of U.S. President George W. Bush at war.
Source:Xinhua
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