Chileans began voting for a new president today and are expected to elect the South American country's first woman leader, a socialist who leads a moderate conservative billionaire in opinion polls.
Michelle Bachelet, a medical doctor and former defense minister who was imprisoned and tortured early in the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, has a five-point lead over opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, the latest poll showed.
Presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet
If she wins, Ms Bachelet (54), will be the fourth consecutive president from the centre-left coalition that formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet and has run the country of 16 million people since he stepped down in 1990.
Polling stations began opening at 1100 GMT and will start closing at 1900 GMT. The first results are expected at around 2130 GMT.
"Today is the day of the citizens. It's their decision. We're very calm and very optimistic," Ms Bachelet said before entering a polling station in eastern Santiago to vote.
A Bachelet victory would consolidate a shift to the left in Latin America, where different shades of leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favored to win Mexico's presidential election in July.
Last month, Ms Bachelet won 46 per cent of the vote in a four-way first-round presidential election. It was short of the absolute majority she needed to avoid a January runoff against Mr Pinera (56), who came in second with 25 per cent.
Ms Bachelet pledges deep reforms to Chile's private pension system, which is admired around the world as a model but is considered expensive and inadequate at home.
While Latin American elections often give investors jitters, markets have taken Chile's presidential campaign in stride, confident that whoever who wins will follow the prudent fiscal policies that have helped make it the region's most stable economy.
Ms Bachelet would be only the second woman elected to head a South American state, and the first who was not the widow of a former president. Janet Jagan of Guyana was elected to succeed her husband, Cheddi Jagan, as president in 1997 after he died.
Mr Pinera, a former senator who owns 27 per cent of Chile's dominant airline, LAN Airlines, has focused on Chileans' main concerns: unemployment and crime.
He pledges to create a million jobs in four years and put 12,000 more police on the street.