Austria holds tight election with far right bidding for historic win

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00:00Of some politics news, the far-right Freedom Party is neck and neck with the ruling Conservatives

00:05in Austria as citizens head to the polls this Sunday to elect their new parliament.

00:10An absolute majority is out of the question, but the winner will claim the right to lead

00:15a coalition government. The Freedom Party is Eurosceptic, friendly with Russia and critical

00:21of Islam. They beat the Austrian People's Party by less than 1% in European elections in June.

00:28Results are expected shortly after 5 p.m. Central European time today.

00:33Let's get some more from our Vienna correspondent, John Cummins.

00:40Well, the race is almost certainly very, very close. The Freedom Party, as you said,

00:45have been leading in opinion polls for months now, if not years, and I guess we could say it's their

00:51election to lose. But we've seen in recent weeks that the Conservatives, the People's Party,

00:56has really made up ground, particularly with regard to the devastating floods a couple of

01:01weeks ago. The Conservative Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, was able to present himself as a crisis

01:05manager, a strong leader. And I think that really helped the party's fortunes. So we've seen the

01:10Conservatives really make up ground. And as you said in your introduction, just a few months ago,

01:15we had the EU elections, which the Freedom Party won here, but they were much closer than expected.

01:21The Freedom Party was expected to win those elections really quite easily. But in the end,

01:26it was quite a tight race. So I'm expecting this to be very, very tight. And I think there's a

01:30sense here also that it's a very pivotal election and people are going to turn out in large numbers

01:35to vote. And that could also perhaps change the result this evening. Well, the main issues that

01:40have been dominating the campaign, unsurprisingly, I suppose, are things like inflation, the cost of

01:44living, migration, even though migrant numbers have gone down in Austria over the last year or two,

01:50the budget, the budget deficit, the war in Ukraine, and even the COVID pandemic from a

01:56couple of years ago. It's still a topic here. And in all of those topics, all those themes,

02:01the Freedom Party have really been able to capitalise because a lot of those themes are

02:05the sort of things they've been campaigning on for a long, long time. For example, the Freedom

02:09Party has spoken about a fortress Austria, a massive reduction in the numbers of asylum

02:16seekers and migrants coming to Austria. It's also been talking about Austria's neutrality,

02:22a strict neutral policy that Austria doesn't want to be involved in foreign wars, that

02:27Austria shouldn't contribute, for example, military aid to Ukraine, or that it shouldn't

02:31be part of this European Sky Shield air defence system. So, you know, all these kinds of topics

02:38that we've had over the last couple of weeks in this campaign have really played into the

02:41hands of the Freedom Party.

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