Kazakhstan reelected on Sunday President Nursultan Nazarbayev for fifth consecutive five-year term, with early results showing that the incumbent won with 97.7 % of the votes.

According to Kazahkstan's Central Election Commission, the voter turnout stood at record 95.11 %, the BBC reports.

The reelection of Nazarbayev, who had promised to bring economic and social stability to the country, was widely expected.

The incumbent president contested the elections with virtually no opposition, as the other two candidates were both seen as being pro-government.

The candidate of the Communist Party Turgun Syzdykov and the chairman of the Trade Union Federation Abelgazi Kusainov garnered respectively 1.6 % and 0.7 % of the votes.

Kazakh authorities have been frequently accused by human rights activists of suppressing the opposition.

Elections were initially scheduled to take place in 2016, but Nazarbayev called an early election, as a possible move to dismiss speculations of a possible successor.

Nazarbayev has been in power since 1989, when he became First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party, and then serving as president since Kazakhstan became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In previous elections he had been elected with similarly overwhelming support – 98.7 % in 1991, 91.15 % in 2005 and 95 % in 2011, TASS news agency reports.

The elections were held as the economy has struggled to compete with cheaper Russian imports in the past months, which resulted in large-scale layoffs.