Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has sealed an overwhelming election victory to secure a third term and further extend his family's decades-long rule, in a vote rejected as illegitimate by the sidelined opposition.
Aliyev scored a crushing win in the tightly-controlled ex-Soviet state with almost 85 per cent of the vote, with main opposition challenger Jamil Hasanli in distant second place, partial results showed.
"The presidential election in Azerbaijan was a triumph for democracy," Aliyev said in a televised address early on Thursday morning.
"The fact that this vote was free and transparent is another important step towards democracy," Aliyev said.
But Hasanli's election campaign has already alleged there were "massive" electoral violations across the resource-rich country and promised not to accept the result.
Aliyev had an unassailable lead in the elections with some 84.7 per cent of the vote, the central election commission said, in partial results based on a 75 per cent vote count.
Hasanli was in second on just more than 5.2 per cent of the vote.
The 51-year-old Aliyev came to power in a disputed 2003 vote after the death of his powerful father Heydar, a former KGB officer and Communist-era boss who ruled the country of 9.5 million people for the preceding 10 years.
He was re-elected in 2008 with 89 per cent of the vote in a poll called neither free nor fair by some foreign observers and pushed through a referendum a year later that allowed him to run this time round.
Aliyev, who has a vice-like grip over most media in the country, has stayed away from televised debates and passed up public rallies ahead of the polls.
An initial exit poll from the officially-accredited Prognos agency put Aliyev on almost 84 per cent of the vote, far ahead of Hasanli, in second place with around eight per cent.
Some 72 per cent of Azerbaijan's roughly five million registered voters cast their ballots, the central electoral commission said.
Main challenger Hasanli, however, has rubbished the election, alleging a string of violations, including voters being bussed round to cast ballots at multiple polling stations, ballot box-stuffing and observers being barred from monitoring the vote.
Fuelled by billions of petrodollars, living standards in the mainly Muslim country have soared in the past decade, with Azerbaijan becoming an increasingly important energy supplier to Europe and an ally of NATO.
Normally fragmented, Azerbaijan's weakened opposition - much of which boycotted the 2008 poll - in May seemed primed for a genuine challenge after rallying around a single candidate, but have faced major obstacles getting their message heard.
Hasanli, who has attracted thousands of supporters to rallies, had pledged to step down after two years if elected and switch Azerbaijan to a parliamentary system.
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