Northern Ireland's political parties made final appeals for support yesterday on the eve of today's Assembly elections.
Transfers will prove crucial in the elections which are based on 18 six-seater constituencies. The SDLP and the Ulster Unionists have urged voters to make full use of their preferences and to vote down the ballot paper.
Some of those ballot papers will be long, with both North Down and East Antrim fielding 19 candidates.
There are 256 candidates fighting for the 108 seats at Stormont. The current electoral register contains 1,097,526 electors, as of September 1st.
The figure reflects stringent new registration procedures which require each elector to register personally and to provide a national insurance number and a signature.
No voter will be able to cast a ballot without valid picture identification.
The 1,532 polling booths in 612 polling centres open this morning at 7 a.m. and remain open until 10 p.m.
Counting begins tomorrow with the first counts expected around midday. Counting will be suspended at around 8 p.m. and will resume on Friday morning.
The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, returned to his attack on the anti-agreement Democratic Unionists yesterday and appealed for the electorate to turn out despite the winter weather and the appeal of live soccer games on television this evening.
In a strongly worded personal criticism, Mr Durkan singled out Dr Ian Paisley, claiming the DUP leader had "revelled in the role of wrecker-in-chief in Northern politics" for 40 years.
He said: "The time has now come to wipe the smile off Ian Paisley's face," adding that the DUP was determined to wreck the accord if it became the leading unionist force in Northern Ireland.
"Only the SDLP can stop the DUP gallop," he said. "Seize our future or watch the clock go back." The Ulster Unionists also criticised the DUP, accusing it of inconsistency over its advice to voters regarding transfers.
Sir Reg Empey claimed that Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Nigel Dodds had offered conflicting instructions to supporters about transferring.
Sir Reg called on Dr Paisley, who has kept a low media profile throughout the campaign since the election was called on October 21st, to sort out the confusion.
Advising against "plumping" for one party without transferring support to others, the UUP warned: "Peter Robinson's advice risks handing some unionist seats to Sinn Féin on a plate."
The Sinn Féin president also campaigned yesterday, turning up in North Belfast to support his party's two candidates there.
Sinn Féin is aiming for 23 or more seats - up from 18 in the last Assembly - and is hoping for a significant increase in the party's share of the vote in the Belfast area.
Mr Adams also criticised the DUP: "A vote for Sinn Féin is the most effective response to the DUP and other opponents of change. The days of second-class citizenship are gone forever.
"There will be no return to the failures of the past. There will be no renegotiation of the Good Friday agreement. Sinn Féin are problem-solvers. We are building a better and a brighter future for all our people."
Nine Sinn Féin candidates are running in the city's four constituencies and Mr Adams has expressed confidence that eight can be elected.
This would mean taking two seats in North Belfast, where it has one at present, five in West Belfast, where the party has four outgoing Assembly members, and one seat in South Belfast - which would be a breakthrough for the party in the largely middle-class areas of the city.
While first-preference totals will indicate trends, transfers will ultimately decide the shape of any future Assembly.
In 1998, a small number of seats were decided on a handful of votes.
The SDLP's Mr Danny O'Connor took the sixth seat in East Antrim with a margin of 14 votes.
Had a handful of votes gone any other way, the seat could have gone to a DUP candidate.