Voting starts in Portugal's presidential race

Sunday voting in the presidential election of the Portuguese, with polls provide a center-right in office Anibal Cavaco Silva won the first round in the middle of a serious debt crisis.

9,600,000 voters are eligible to cast their ballots from 8 am (GMT) and 19 hours for one of the six candidates vying for the presidency, with initial results expected one hour after the polls closed.

prices are expected to blank disc, though. Voters concerned about rising unemployment and poverty in Lisbon will be an austerity plan of the third year the survey has shown apathy.

Cavaco Silva, 71, an economist and member of the main opposition party, the Socialist Party, is tipped as the favorite, and last week warned voters against "the very high cost" of a possible second round.

Four polls published on Friday on the last day of campaigning gave the outgoing president between 54.6 and 59 percent of the vote. That was more than 30 percentage points ahead of his main rival, the poet Manuel Alegre, 74, with the support of the opposition Socialists, including Prime Minister Jose Socrates, and the extreme left.