President Nazarbayev earns Crushing Election Win

    Election officials in Kazakhstan have declared long-serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev the overwhelming winner of a vote held this weekend.
    The Central Election Commission unveiled incomplete provisional figures Monday showing Nazarbayev with 95.5 percent of votes cast.
    With turnout reaching nearly 90 percent of the vote, that win should lend Nazarbayev a new crushing and unimpeachable five-year mandate.
    Nazarbayev has led Kazakhstan virtually unchallenged since the 1980s, when it still formed part of the Soviet Union.
    Voters turned out in record numbers for an election Sunday in Kazakhstan that is guaranteed to overwhelmingly reaffirm President Nursultan Nazarbayev's domination of the oil-rich Central Asian nation.
    The turnout of nearly 90 percent appeared astonishing given the low-key nature of the election campaign.
    Preliminary results will be announced early Monday. Four exit polls run by government-friendly institutes late Sunday estimated Nazarbayev's tally at an average 95 percent of the vote.
    Early voters and 18-year-olds casting their ballot for the first time were rewarded with household goods, such as food blenders and electric kettles.
    Nazarbayev, a 70-year-old former Communist party boss, has ruled mainly Muslim Kazakhstan unchallenged since the 1980s, when it was still part of the Soviet Union.
    With 89.9 percent of the 9 million eligible voters casting their ballot, any concerns authorities may have had about a weak turnout have been quashed.
    Local election monitoring activists have reported numerous violations. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's election monitoring arm has complained about a lack of transparency and competition in the vote.
    Several reports surfaced of university students being pressured into voting by threats of expulsion.
    Hundreds of students were seen at dawn outside polling stations at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, which critics said showed that pressure was being applied.
    "With this wretched weather, and early on a Sunday morning when you would expect students to lie in ... to see such large crowds is quite unnatural," said Vladimir Kozlov, leader of the unregistered opposition Alga party.
    Election monitors also reported seeing anomalous spikes in turnout figures at polling stations at various junctures of the day.
    Nazarbayev's term was to have ended in 2012, but in January he called the early election after a proposal to cancel the next two elections was ruled unconstitutional. Critics speculated he was trying to head off any popular uprising like those sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, according to the Associated Press.