Lithuania's austerity-weary voters were Sunday expected to swing left in a legislative election, evicting a four-year-old Conservative government which steered the Baltic nation through one of the world's deepest recessions.
Pre-election polls showed Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius' Conservatives and their Liberal allies facing punishment even though the EU member's economy has been growing since 2010.
The likely victors are the centre-left Social Democrats led by Algirdas Butkevicius, and the leftwing populist Labour party of controversial Russian-born ex-minister and businessman Viktor Uspaskich.
"We hope to win this election and form the new coalition," Butkevicius, tipped to be premier, said after casting his ballot.
Voters underlined the mood. "I want change. I've suffered during the crisis. My salary was cut and my husband lost his job," Jurgita Kacinskiene, 36, told AFP.
The left-leaning parties pledge to raise the minimum wage and introduce a progressive income tax, but Butkevicius, a former finance minister, underlines his prudent credentials. He quit in 2005 when a Social Democrat-led government failed to close the gap between spending and revenue.
Kubilius - the only premier to survive a full term since Lithuania seceded from the Soviet Union in 1990 - ousted the Social Democrats in the last election in 2008. His message then was that they let growth fuelled by credit and wage hikes get out of hand and left Lithuania ill-prepared for hard times.
Kubilius was premier in 1999-2000 when Lithuania was lashed by the economic meltdown in neighbouring Russia. But the 2009 crisis was far deeper, as Lithuania's economy shrank by 14.8 percent.
His government launched an austerity drive well beyond those of western members of the EU, which Lithuania joined in 2004. "We took responsibility for crucial decisions and guaranteed a responsible fiscal policy. I hope this responsible policy will continue," Kubilius said after casting his ballot.
Growth returned in 2010, at 1.4 percent, before hitting 6.0 percent in 2011, but analysts say too few voters feel the benefits. The government's forecast is a slower 2.5 percent this year, and 3.0 percent in 2013. Gloom has stoked emigration to western Europe, which still seems an option despite its economic woes.
"We must have change. My three children are still in Lithuania, but they aren't happy, their salaries don't suit them. Maybe they'll leave too," said bookshop employee Eugenija Norviliene, 63. Conservative voter Ramute Bacinskiene, 65, faulted that. "It's not so bad here, we have food, clothes. We don't have wars here, look what's happening around the world. I believe stability is very important," she said.
Seventy members of Lithuania's 141-seat parliament are elected by proportional representation from party lists. The remaining 71 are chosen in constituency races, with October 28 run-offs where no candidate won a majority.
The left also pledges to "reset" ties with Moscow, rocky since independence and spiking over alleged market abuses by Russian energy giant Gazprom, Lithuania's sole gas supplier.
Kubilius has striven to diversify energy supplies, amid problems since the 2009 closure of Lithuania's only nuclear power plant - shutting the Soviet-era facility, of the same type that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986, was a condition of EU entry.
In tandem with the election, the Social Democrats secured parliamentary backing for a non-binding referendum on whether to continue plans to build a new plant. The Conservatives claim bad faith by the Social Democrats, who tried to delay the old plant's closure when they were in government.Butkevicius rejected that.
"We are for nuclear power," he said, claiming the current plans make little technical or commercial sense, requiring a rethink. Polls close at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT).