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reuters
BUDAPEST/GYONGYOS
Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a last-ditch effort to mobilise supporters in Hungary's parliamentary election on Sunday, as interim turnout ran nearly as high as it did in a 2002 vote that consigned him to eight years in opposition.
After an acrimonious campaign in which rightwing nationalist Orban projected himself as a saviour of Hungary's Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, all opinion polls put his Fidesz party well ahead.
A strong victory could embolden him to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union's migration policies. Orban, Hungary's longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the bloc. Interim data at 1500 GMT showed voter turnout at 63.2 percent, compared with the 67.87 percent measured a little later in the second round of voting in 2002 under a different electoral system, when final turnout reached 73.5 percent.
Final turnout in the 2014 vote that gave Orban a massive victory was only 61.7 percent.
Reuters correspondents saw long lines of voters at polling stations. In central London, emigre Hungarians queued for hundreds of metres in the rain to vote, some waiting for more than two hours. Some pollsters said voter turnout above 70 percent could signal that the opposition was mobilising supporters efficiently, and might even deprive Fidesz of its parliamentary majority.ust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary."
