Millions in Indonesia head to the polls to elect Jokowi's presidential successor

More than 200 million voters in Indonesia are heading to more than 800,000 polling stations in the world's third-largest democracy on Wednesday to elect President Joko Widodo's successor, a new national House of Representatives and various local legislators.

Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, 72, is the frontrunner in what could be the former army general's last attempt at seeking the highest political office in the world's most populous Muslim country, according to various opinion polls ahead of the Feb. 14 vote. Widodo, also popularly known as Jokowi, beat Prabowo in the last two presidential elections.

The outcome of these elections could go some way in affecting Indonesia's nascent democracy, while determining whether Southeast Asia's largest economy will attain developed status by 2045. It's also unclear if the new president would derail the relocation of the national capital from Jakarta to Nusantara or curtail Jokowi's ambitions of turning Indonesia into a global hub for battery manufacturing.

"It is [Prabowo's] election to lose, but that doesn't mean he's going to win this fast," Richard Borsuk, an adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told CNBC "Squawk Box Asia" last week.

Some of the latest opinion polls showed Prabowo netting more than 50% of the vote against two other opponents. Prabowo was nominated by his Gerindra Party.

To win outright, a pair must obtain more than 50% of the national vote and at least 20% of ballots cast in more than half of the 38 provinces in Indonesia on Wednesday. If no pair achieves this, Indonesians across the world's largest archipelagic state, spanning more than 17,000 islands, will head to a runoff in June between the