Mali has voted for a new president in a bid to usher in peace and stability in the first election since a military coup plunged the country into chaos.
Voters chose from 27 candidates to lead the nation from the crisis ignited by last year's mutiny, which allowed Islamists to seize the vast desert north before a French-led military intervention dislodged them earlier this year.
Preliminary results collated by journalists in polling stations after the end of voting suggested that former premier Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had taken a clear early lead.
The unofficial projection, based on the accounts of reporters watching counts across the country, indicates that Keita, 69, could even cause an upset and win the first round outright.
His supporters are already celebrating in the capital Bamako outside his party headquarters, as news of his apparent lead was broadcast on local radio.
French President Francois Hollande welcomed the smooth running of the vote, "marked by a good turnout and an absence of any major incident".
Voting stations opened at 8am on Sunday (1800 AEST) under heavy security.
A day earlier, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the main armed groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), had threatened to "strike" polling stations. There were no reports of serious incidents, however.
After casting his ballot in Bamako, acting president Dioncounda Traore, who was not running in the election, called on all candidates to respect the outcome.
"I am very satisfied with the general conditions in terms of the organisation of the elections," he said.
The APEM Network, an independent Malian organisation that deployed 2,100 observers across the nation, reported a strong turn-out among the country's electorate of almost seven million.
Louis Michel, chief of the European Union election observation mission, told reporters after voting ended: "Overall everything went well. There was the enthusiasm among voters".
A UN peacekeeping force was deployed to Mali earlier this month. The deployment, which will reach 12,600 by the end of the year, allows France to start withdrawing most of its 4,500 troops, who arrived there in January to stop the Islamists from advancing towards Bamako.
