BUCHAREST, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- Over 18 million Romanians are expected at the polls on Sunday to elect a new bicameral parliament for the next four years.
The polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and will close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT).
As many as 6,477 candidates, including those from more than a dozen political parties and independent candidates, are running for seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The new parliament will consist of 136 senators and 326 deputies, including 308 deputies to be elected by voters and 18 designated ones representing ethnic minorities.
A party must pass a 5-percent threshold to win seats in the parliament, while for electoral alliances, they have to win 8 to 10 percent of the vote according to the number of coalition parties.
The current elections mark at least two firsts. One is the switch from the uninominal voting system, which means only one member can be selected from each electoral district, back to the party lists voting system, which emphasizes proportional representation in elections and was last used in 2004.
Another is that Romanians living abroad will be able to resort to postal voting.
The latest opinion polls conducted by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy (IRES) show that the opposition Social Democratic Party is favored to win the parliamentary elections with 44 percent of the vote and is likely to form a parliamentary majority that would allow it to name the future prime minister. As its friendly party, the Liberal Democratic Alliance has 6 percent of the vote intentions.
The National Liberal Party will be a great distance off with 23 percent and Save Romania Union with 7 percent. Both of the rightist parties announced that they support current Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos for a new mandate.
Other parties hopeful to enter the new parliament include the People's Movement Party, with 6 percent, and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, with 5 percent.
In terms of the voter turnout, the IRES survey shows that 42 percent of those questioned said they would definitely go to the polls. The voter turnout at the legislative elections in Romania since 1989 indicated that Romanians' interest in the elections has constantly decreased, with the turnout dropping from the previous level of over 86 percent to less than 50 percent in the 2012 elections.
