The right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) looks set to win the European elections in the country with 27% of the vote, ahead of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), according to an initial forecast.
The Freedom Party has gained around 10 percentage points compared to the 2019 EU election, according to a forecast published as the polling stations closed.
During the election campaign, the party often emphasized its scepticism towards the EU under the slogan "Stop the EU madness" and portrayed the EU as a warmongering force in the Ukraine conflict.
According to the pollsters' calculations, which are based on several thousand interviews before the vote and on election day, the SPÖ and ÖVP each have around 23%.
For the governing ÖVP, this means a drop of more than 10 percentage points. The SPÖ is roughly at the same level as five years ago.
The result for the Greens was also eagerly awaited. Their lead candidate is 23-year-old climate activist Lena Schilling. The Greens lost around four points and now have around 10%, the forecast showed.
The liberal Neos party is likely to make some gains and, according to the pollsters, will also reach around 10%.
Austria has 20 of the future 720 seats in the European Parliament.
Sunday's ballot was also seen as a test for elections to the lower house of parliament, the National Council, in the autumn. Here, too, polls have so far seen the FPÖ as the clear favourite.
The forecast was published by the news agency APA, the public broadcaster ORF and the private broadcaster Puls24. It is based on election day surveys by the institutes Foresight, Arge Wahlen and Peter Hajek.
Voting had been taking place since Thursday for the European Parliament as hundreds of millions of eligible voters in the 27 EU member states cast their ballots over four days ending Sunday evening.
The vote in Austria was marred by severe storms in parts of the country, meaning that some polling stations were either inaccessible or destroyed.
This was the case for polling stations in the southern state of Styria, specifically in Deutschfeistritz, a village of some 4,000 residents located north of Graz and other districts, authorities told the APA news agency on Sunday morning.
Authorities reacted very quickly and relocated the polling stations affected, the APA report said.
Signs had been put up in the municipalities indicating where the new polling stations were located, and officials largely publicized the changes via social media, it was reported.
Severe storms hit the region of Styria on Saturday evening. Flash floods damaged houses and swept away cars.
The Übelbach river burst its banks after torrential rainfall, with meteorologists reporting more than 100 millimetres of rain falling in the region within a short period.
A mudslide hit the motorway near the southern city of Graz, and strong winds also caused numerous trees to fall onto roads.
The civil defence alert was lifted on Sunday. While the weather initially calmed down on Sunday, meteorologists warned of potential further thunderstorms throughout the day, particularly in the western Tyrol region.
