People are voting in presidential elections today in Kazakhstan, though the winner is a forgone conclusion.

Oil-rich Kazakhstan, the most prosperous country in ex-Soviet Central Asia, voted Sunday in a presidential election widely expected to give Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has led the country for the last 16 years, another seven-year term.

Amid allegations of both official and opposition misdeeds, Nazarbayev was so confident of victory over his four challengers that he scheduled a gathering with supporters at a sports complex in the capital, Astana, on Monday morning, just minutes after election officials planned to announce preliminary results.

Many opinion polls backed his sense of assurance. In a poll released Saturday, the U.S.-based Intermedia Survey Institute reported that Nazarbayev had 71 percent support, while none of his challengers received more than 2 percent. The poll of 1,645 people conducted Nov. 7-28 claimed a margin of error of 2.42 percentage points.

However, the institute noted that the responses ”may reflect some wariness by respondents to express their true attitudes.”

Nazarbayev often shows an authoritarian streak, and opposition candidates claim their campaigns have been hindered by the theft of campaign materials, seizure of newspapers supporting them, and the denial of attractive venues for rallies.

His two previous election victories were widely criticized as undemocratic.

But Nazarbayev, after voting on Sunday in Astana, said this year’s elections were ”being held in unprecedented democratic conditions.”

Kazakh officials have alleged that the opposition plans postelection disturbances similar to the protests in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the past two years that helped bring opposition figures to power.

While the opposition didn’t have a chance at winning even if the campaign was conducted fairly and the elections held freely, the OSCE made sure to remind us that they were far from done well. Beatings of opposition activists, millions of dollars funnelled to officials in exchange for their support, censorship of the independent media; hey, it’s a veritable bonanza of authoritarianism. So why is the opposition fairing so poorly? Well, Nazarbayev has several factors on his side.

First of all, Kazakhstan has grown mightily over the past decade, and people are enjoying the newfound oil-wealth by living to much higher standards than their neighbors. They are much more well off than they have been in the past and don’t want to risk it on an opposition whose credentials are somewhat lacking.

That does not excuse Nazarbayev, however. The beatings, arrests, and killing need to stop and the West needs to do something about it. So far, the United States has been mum on the reform word when it comes to Kazakhstan, as it believes that the current path is the long and stable one of evolution toward democracy. But don’t expect much pressure right now.

With all of this taken into account, the chance of revolution is low. The capital, Astana, is in the snowy steppes where temperatures will be easily below freezing. The opposition itself is also based out of Almaty, the old capital, much further to the south. Don’t be expecting tents to be pitched on a bed of ice. If a protest is going to start anywhere, it will be in Almaty, about 1200 miles away and within crushing distance.

How Nazarbayev reacts if things go out of the day-to-day is what will be interesting. The West has been silent for now, but can it remain so when every aspect of the election is fraudulent? And what if protests break out and are violently put down? Watch carefully. I’m sure China and Russia will be watching as well.