As expected, Portugal's conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva has been elected to a second term in office.

With 98% of the votes counted Monday, the official results show Silva had won 53% of the votes, with his top rival, Manuel Alegre, coming a distant second with 20%.

Presidential elections were held on the backdrop of a growing debt crisis in Portugal.

Silva supports the austerity plan put forward by the Socialist government, aiming at reducing the country's deficit and avoiding a Greece and Ireland bailout scenario.

Portugal's president is a mainly ceremonial figure but has one key power: to dissolve parliament without having to justify the decision.

The government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates is next due to face an election in 2013.

Voter turnout Sunday fell to a record low of about 50% with opposition parties insisting hundred or even thousands of people were not able to cast their vote over wide-spread problems with the new electronic citizen's card that has replaced the old voter registration card and other forms of identification.

71-year-old Cavaco Silva is an economist and a former center-right Social Democrat Prime Minister from 1985-1995. His closest rival, 74-year-old prominent poet Manuel Alegre, is from the ruling Socialists.

Alegre accuses Silva of blackmailing voters and undermining democracy.

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