Portuguese voters went to the polls on Sunday to elect a government that will lead the nation through a time of deep austerity and recession after it received a 78-billion-euro bailout from the European Union and the IMF.
The election is likely to end a period of political uncertainty that started with the collapse of the Socialist government in March and led Lisbon to become the third country in the euro zone to seek a bailout after Greece and Ireland.
The Portuguese, who face the highest level of unemployment in three decades, are expected to reject caretaker Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates in the snap ballot and turn to opposition centre-right Social Democrat Pedro Passos Coelho.
Passos Coelho, who voted at a polling station in Amadora on the outskirts of Lisbon, where reporters by far outnumbered voters, said Portugal had to stick to the bailout terms to regain market confidence and return to growth.
"You know that we now have a very difficult period for the next two or three years. But I'm sure that we will make the necessary change and Portugal will achieve new prosperity with economic growth," he told reporters in English.
"In the markets, we will only have confidence if we are committed to the memorandum of understanding reached with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund," he said, adding that he was hoping for a "great result" in the ballot.
The latest opinion polls gave Passos Coelho around 37 percent support compared with 31 percent for Socrates, which means the Social Democrats will probably need to team up with the smaller rightist CDS party to form a majority in parliament. The CDS has about 12 percent backing in polls.
Socrates, voting inside a car showroom in central Lisbon, said he was "confident and calm" and called on the people to turn out and vote.
Many voters said they were disillusioned with politics.
"Seeing the economic and political situation in the country I just don't believe any of the candidates. But not voting will make it even worse," said Jose Evora, a retiree voting on the outskirts of Lisbon. Ricardo, a voter in his late 20s, expressed a common view, that any new government will have to march to the beat of the lenders' drum.
"I think the election won't bring anything new because it's the IMF in charge of the country now ... Any party that gets to the government will just have to follow IMF rules," he said.
Antonio Barroso, Europe analyst at Eurasia Group consultants, wrote in a research note that a rightist coalition government was the most likely election outcome.
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