Austria election - as it happened: Conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz take victory with far right second
Follow the latest as voting opens in Austria's snap election, where the far-right Freedom party is on course to enter government for the first time
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Your support makes all the difference.Polling stations have opened in Austria, where voters will decide whether the country moves towards the right after decades of centrist policies.
Three parties are vying for first place in Sunday's national election: the Social Democrats, the People's Party and the Freedom Party.
The centre-left Social Democrats have campaigned on reducing social inequality. The other two have focused on concerns about immigration and Islam.
Both the People's Party and the Freedom Party have called for securing Austria's borders and quickly deporting asylum-seekers whose requests are denied.
Polls show the popularity of People's Party head Sebastian Kurz has put his party ahead. At 31, he would become Europe's youngest leader if his party wins and he can form a government.
Opinion polls have consistently shown the OVP in the lead with around a third of the vote, and second place being a tight race between the Social Democrats and the Freedom Party (FPO), whose candidate came close to winning last year's presidential election.
"We must stop illegal immigration to Austria because otherwise there will be no more order and security," Kurz told tabloid daily Oesterreich on Friday night.
Campaigning has been dominated by the immigration issue. Kurz plans to cap benefit payments for refugees at well below the general level and bar other foreigners from receiving such payments until they have lived in the country for five years.
He says he wants to shake up Austrian politics, which for decades has been dominated by a coalition between his party and the Social Democrats.
Kurz's opponents say he is merely a new face on an old party that has been in power in various coalitions for 30 straight years.
The last polling stations close at 5pm (4pm BST), with the first projections due minutes later. A final count is expected later in the evening.
Any tight margins might not be settled on the night, however, since a record number of postal ballots have been issued -- even more than in the presidential run-off in May of last year, in which they swung the result, though a re-run was later ordered.
The Interior Ministry said more than 889,000 postal ballots had been issued, enough for roughly a seventh of the 6.4 million registered voters.
The counting of those ballots will not begin until Monday.
Immigration has proved to be the number one issue in this election campaign.
Austria, a wealthy country of 8.7 million people that stretches from Slovakia to Switzerland, was a gateway into Germany for more than 1 million people during the migration crisis that began in 2015. Many of them were fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Austria also took in roughly 1 percent of its population in asylum seekers in 2015, one of the highest proportions on the continent. Many voters say the country was overrun.
"Immigration policy, which Mr Kurz talked about so often, was decisive," 58-year-old Kurz supporter Ingrid Regina said outside a polling station in Vienna on a warm, sunny autumn day. "I expect things to improve and order to return."
The inflow of migrants buoyed the far right Freedom Party and similar anti-immigration parties across Europe, including the Alternative for Germany party, which secured seats in parliament last month.
The Freedom Party, by contrast, has been in Austria's parliament for decades and currently holds a fifth of seats there.
"I am hoping for a good result with a greater vote of confidence," Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache told reporters at a polling stating in Vienna. "If we reach 25 percent that would be good, a great success, but perhaps even more is possible."
Kurz says he will shut the main migrant routes into Europe through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean. He and the Freedom Party have kept immigration at the heart of the campaign, while Social Democrat Chancellor Christian Kern has touted falling unemployment and the fastest economic growth in six years.
Kurz plans to cap benefits for refugees at well below the general level and bar other foreigners from receiving such payments until they have lived in the country for five years.
He also says he wants to shake up Austrian politics, which for decades has been dominated by coalitions between his party and the Social Democrats. His opponents say he is merely a new face on a party in power in various coalitions for 30 years.
"He is our last Christian-social hope," said Kurz supporter Thomas Heine-Geldern, a retired consultant. He was expressing a view that helped Kurz gain control of the OVP, namely that he is its only chance of bringing electoral success to an otherwise ageing and fading party. "I hope it is enough (to win)."
Half an hour to go now until polls close in Austria, at which point we are expecting projected early results. At Sebastian Kurz's party headquarters, "expectation builds":
Young conservative star Sebastian Kurz is on track to become Austria's next leader, projections of Sunday's parliamentary election result showed, but his party is well short of a majority and could seek an alliance with the far right.
Kurz's People's Party (OVP) is in the lead on 30.2 percent, with its current coalition partner, the Social Democrats, on 26.3 percent, neck and neck with the the far-right Freedom Party on 26.8 percent, a projection by pollster SORA said shortly after polls closed, based on an early count of 42 percent of non-postal ballots.
The projection had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. It will be refreshed and become more precise as more ballots are counted throughout the evening. Another projection by pollster ARGE Wahlen also showed the OVP in the lead.
If the People's Party wins, its 31-year old leader, Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, stands good chances of becoming the youngest government leader in Europe
The People's and Freedom parties have called for tightening Austria's borders and quick deportations for rejected asylum seekers.
While the projections are based on initial results, they could herald a coalition between the two parties and a rightward turn for Austria.
If the projected result of 26.3 per cent for SPO is accurate, it's the worst showing for the Social Democrats - who led the outgoing coalition - since the end of Adolf Hitler's rule in Austria, according to Europe Elects.
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