FACTBOX-Election day in the Bahamas

May 2 (Reuters) - Bahamian voters ousted the government of Prime Minister Perry Christie and brought former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham's party back to power in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, according to unofficial results reported by the state-owned ZNS television station.

Following are some key facts about the Bahamas.

GEOGRAPHY: The Bahamas are a chain of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, southeast of Florida, northeast of Cuba, with 2,196 miles (3,542 km) of coastline.

POPULATION: 320,000

ETHNICITY: 85 percent are black; another 12 percent are white and 3 percent are Asian and Hispanic.

RELIGION: Christian Baptists (32 percent), Anglicans (20 percent), Roman Catholics (19 percent) and Methodists (6 percent):

LANGUAGE: English is the official language, though Creole is spoken among Haitian immigrants.

GOVERNMENT: The chief of state is the British monarch, represented by the governor-general. The head of government is the prime minister.

ECONOMY: The Bahamas' economy depends heavily on tourism and offshore banking. Tourism and tourism-driven construction and manufacturing accounts for about three-fifths of the gross domestic product and directly or indirectly employs half of the archipelago's labor force.

HISTORY: Lucayan Indians inhabited the islands when Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World on San Salvador in 1492. British settlement of the islands began in 1647; the islands became a colony in 1783. The Bahamas gained independence from Britain in 1973.

Source: Reuters Alertnet/