Austria Election: Voters head to polls for parliamentary elections Sunday

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Austrian voters will be casting their ballots on Sunday to choose the nation's chancellor. In the running is a young conservative star who wants to beat the far-right at its own game, using a hard-line stance against refugees to win support. CGTN's Guy Henderson reports from Vienna.

30 years old - and on course to become Austria's next Chancellor.

Sebastian Kurz's conservative Peoples Party has blunted a challenge from the far right - by stealing their thunder on immigration.

SEBASTIAN KURZ PEOPLES' PARTY LEADER "I can promise today that we will do everything to end the misuse, and the immigration into our social systems, so only the ones who really need them can benefit from them."

The populists still go further - the Freedom Party's final rally took place in the heart of a Viennese neighborhood with many Muslims residents, who went about their business - as candidate Heinz-Christian Sprache singled them out.

HEINZ-CHRISTIAN STRACHE FREEDOM PARTY LEADER "Sebastian Kurz said that Islam is part of Austria. No, Islam is not a part of Austria."

Similar language brought the FPO within a whisker of the presidency last December.

The man who led that campaign denies such language is extreme.

NORBERT HOFER FORMER FREEDOM PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE "It's ok to be right but you don't have to be extreme."

To moderates - that's exactly what the FPO are though - and they're favourites to finish runner-up.

GUY HENDERSON VIENNA "The Freedom Party has a decent chance of sharing power with Kurz - that'd be another blow to Europe's liberal order. Which looks isolated the FPO last time it made it into government more than a decade ago. That'd be far less likely now".

Because nationalist rhetoric is mainstream now - something that riles those in the Turkish market right next door.

Bici Melehat is Austrian - but doesn't always feel it.

BICI MELAHAT FAVORITEN RESIDENT "Equal treatment - if you have lived here for a long time, you want to be treated like an Austrian. When I wear this headscarf, some people, they look at me like this.Why My face is here - I am a woman. I speak perfect German. That's the truth."

The incumbent is Chancellor Christian Kern - who's centre left Social Democrats have been accused of wrecklessness for initially opening Austria's borders during the refugee crisis.

Kern's hardly optimistic.

CHRISTIAN KERN AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR "I guarantee you that this party here in this tent will not be our last."

Austrian politics has already shifted to the right: on Sunday, we'll find out how far. Guy Henderson, CGTN, VIENNA