By Diadie Ba

DAKAR, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Senegal's opposition on Wednesday prepared to contest preliminary poll results showing President Abdoulaye Wade had secured an easy re-election, while some voters wondered at his apparent first-round walkover.

Electoral authorities have yet to declare official results from Sunday's ballot, but government sources say the octogenarian president has gained a convincing victory with around 55 percent after almost all votes have been counted.

Wade, who has ruled the small West African state since 2000, had made winning in the first round a rallying cry of his election campaign, which stressed the importance of continuity in one of Africa's most stable democracies.

Leading opposition challengers, who had insisted it was impossible for Wade to obtain a second five-year mandate in the first round, have denounced what they call a fraudulent vote.

The Socialist Party candidate, Ousmane Tanor Dieng, and others, have promised a formal challenge to the election results, which are due to be officially announced by midnight on Friday. They must then be confirmed by the Constitutional Council once any complaints have been dealt with.

"When fraudsters organise elections, the results are already known in advance," said Socialist Party spokeswoman Aissata Tall Sall, condemning the way Wade's Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) had declared victory as polls were still closing.

"A president who has not been elected cannot run a country. We've just seen the most twisted elections in our history," she said, adding her party had detected massive double voting.

Monitors from West African regional bloc ECOWAS have declared Sunday's election generally free and fair.

According to the early returns posted by voting stations, Wade's closest challengers trailed far behind him. His former prime minister and ally Idrissa Seck had around 15 percent, just ahead of Dieng.

But while the Socialist party called on Senegalese to "assume their responsibilities" in the face of what it termed a rigged result, many ordinary people seemed surprised -- if resigned -- at Wade's apparently comfortable victory.

"It's logical that the winning party should win, but it's the margin that's serious ... there's some kind of trickery here," said Makhouredia Diop, a forwarding agent, in Dakar.

STATE RESOURCES

Wade, whose 2000 election win broke the Socialists' 40-year grip on power since independence, has cultivated an image of a wise, paternalistic figure in the former French colony, most of whose nearly 12 million people live from farming and fishing.

His critics say he has failed to deliver on promises to reduce unemployment and improve living standards and public services in Senegal, one of the few countries in West Africa not to have experienced a coup or civil war since independence.

They point to the drama of thousands of desperate young Senegalese who have been risking their lives in flimsy fishing boats to try to reach Europe via the Spanish Canary Islands.

But few people expected strong popular protests against the poll result.

"I don't think people will protest. ... The reality in our country is that people tend to become attached to the leader in power," Amadou Mbaye, a schoolteacher, told Reuters.

"He had all the state resources at his disposal to control the electoral process, he put everything in place to win," he said, referring to Wade's powerful re-election campaign.

Apart from a rumbling civil conflict in the southern Casamance province, political violence in Senegal is rare, but tensions have spilled over into isolated clashes between rival election supporters in recent weeks.

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