Tunisia votes in historic presidential election

Tunisians are heading to the polls in the first free vote since independence, voting in a presidential election that will be a closely-fought contest between an old guard who flourished under decades of autocratic rule and a new breed of politicians that has emerged since a 2011 revolution.

Voting started at 8am local time on Sunday and polling stations will close at 6pm. More than 4,500 polling booths have been set up to receive more than 5.2 million eligible voters.

The election has been billed as Tunisia's first free and fair poll since independence from France in 1956. The vote will also mark the first time one president hands over the reins to another.

The country has had just two presidents - the founder of modern Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who overthrew him in a bloodless coup in 1987. Moncef Marzouki has served as interim leader since Ben Ali was toppled in the uprising three years ago.

Secularist Beji Caid Essebsi, 87, is seen as the front-runner after his party Nidaa Tounes (Tunisian call) won last month’s parliamentary polls, with Marzouki his main rival. Essebsi served as minister of the interior, defence and foreign affairs under the country's founding president, Habib Bourguiba.

Some 27 candidates are competing in the race. In the event that no candidate secures an absolute majority, a second round of voting - pitting the two top candidates against each other - will take place on December 28.

At least 80,000 security personnel have been deployed around the country and up to 22,000 observers, 600 of them foreigners, are monitoring the elections.

The country that remains divided between secularists, who support Essebsi and Islamists who support Marzouki.