Cyprus's presidential election will be decided by a run-off between Nikos Christodoulides and Andreas Mavroyiannis on February 12 after the two leading candidates failed to poll enough votes to win the election outright.

Christodoulidis, who is the country's former Foreign Minister and running as an independent, was the pre-election favorite and received 32 percent of the vote in the first round, with Mavroyiannis of the leftist AKEL party winning 29.6 percent.

Candidates needed to win more than 50 percent of the vote to win Cyprus's election outright in the first round.

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Mavroyiannis's showing defied opinion polls which had shown he would likely trail in third place and be left out of the run-off. But he had the backing of AKEL, a well-organised party which had cranked up the rallying of its supporters in the past month.

Averof Neofytou, the leader of the ruling right-wing DISY party, was tipped as the pre-election favorite alongside Christodoulidis, but finished third out of 14 candidates.

"It comes down to Mavroyiannis having the full backing of a party and that Averof (Neofytou) probably didn't," said analyst Fiona Mullen of Sapienta Economics. "It's an extraordinary result," she added. 

Current President Nicos Anastasiades, who by law cannot seek a second five-year term, had been vocal in his support of Neofytou, but Chrisodoulides overshadowed his campaign after leaving the DISY to run as an independent.

That move split the voting amongst the public, with opinion polls showing that Christodoulides gained roughly one-third of the DISY votes.

The result of the first round vote sets up an intriguing battle between Christodoulides and Mayroyiannis, who now have less than a week to convince voters they have the vision to conquer a complex web of problems.

The winner will be tasked with deciding how to break a deadlock in reunification talks on ethnically split Cyprus, solve issues with irregular migration, labor disputes, and repair a national image tarnished by corruption scandals.