Tunisia: Polls close in runoff presidential election

Polls have closed in Tunisia's runoff presidential election, which took place one month after a first-round vote saw voters eschew traditional candidates in favor of political newcomers. 
Voting began at 8 a.m. local time (0700 UTC) and exit polls are expected to be announced Sunday evening.
The turnout stood at 38.2% three hours before the voting ended, the electoral commission said at a press conference, adding that the participation was higher than that in Sunday's legislative elections. About 7.2 million people were registered to vote.
Tunisians are choosing between Nabil Karoui, a 56-year-old media tycoon, who up until Wednesday had been jailed on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, and Kais Saied, a 61-year-old jurist and law professor with no political party but backed by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda.
In the first round, Saied took 18.4% and Karoui 15.6% among a total of 26 candidates.
Sunday's vote is the third national election in five weeks, following the first round of the presidential vote in September and an inconclusive parliamentary election.
The presidential vote is just the second since the country's Arab Spring revolts. Tunisia was the origin of the 2010-2011 uprising across the North African region. The protests overthrew longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his autocratic government in favor of free democratic elections. 
Polls have shown Tunisians are broadly dissatisfied with the political and economic situation of their country, which currently has an unemployment rate of about 15%. 
'Nabil Macaroni'
The former business tycoon, Karoui, heads the newly founded center-left Heart of Tunisia party. He has continued to deny the allegations against him and says they are politically motivated. 
Karoui was released just days before the runoff vote. While in jail, he campaigned by proxy through his wife and party. Although now a free man, he is still under investigation for fraud and banned from traveling overseas.
If elected, Karoui will receive immunity "and all the legal proceedings against him ...  will be suspended until the end of his mandate," Salsabil Klibi, a constitutional law professor, told news agency AFP.
Karoui, also a former Colgate-Palmolive executive, launched a media agency in 2002 alongside his brother. After the Arab Spring revolution, he turned his entertainment channel, Nessma TV, into a news program which then became one of the country's biggest private broadcasters. He and his party distributed free pasta to the poor, earning him the nickname "Nabil Macaroni."
Although he presents himself as a candidate for Tunisia's poor and spoke in Tunisian dialect during Friday's head-to-head television debate with Saied, for some Tunisians Karoui has come to embody corruption.
'Robocop'
Nicknamed "Robocop" for his austere mannerism, Saied is a social conservative famous for his bluntness and controversial views. He has called for the criminalization of homosexuality and a sexual assault law that reprimands unmarried couples who publicly display affection. He has also argued that capital punishment must be maintained and that men and women should not inherit equally. 
Saied was a constitutional law professor at the Tunis faculty of judicial and political sciences from 1999 to 2018. He launched an unorthodox election campaign during his retirement, shunning mass rallies and favoring a door-to-door campaign method.
Last week, Saied announced that he would not campaign ahead of the runoff election against Karoui, arguing that it would give him an "unfair advantage."