Kurz in pole position as Austria election campaigning wraps up
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Austrian political parties began winding up their campaigns on Friday, two days before a parliamentary election Sebastian Kurz's People's Party is tipped to win.

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Sunday's vote is being held in the wake of a video sting scandal in May that felled far-right Freedom Party leader and Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and blew up his pact with Kurz's conservatives.

Looking like a coalition

Polls suggest Kurz's party will win the most votes, but will again need a partner to gain a majority in parliament. His most likely choices are a three-way coalition with the Greens and the liberal, pro-business Neos, or reviving his coalition with the Freedom Party.

The Freedom Party has slid to around 20 percent from 26 percent in the last election in 2017 in the wake of the scandal. The People's Party has risen to around 34 percent from 31.5 percent.

Support for the Greens has surged to roughly 13 percent from less than 4 percent two years ago.

New scandal

The Freedom Party has sought to confine the scandal's fallout largely to Strache, who offered in the sting video to fix government contracts at a dinner party on the holiday island of Ibiza with a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece, but a new potential scandal emerged this week.

Prosecutors said Thursday they are investigating Strache, one of his former bodyguards and the former head of his office on suspicion of fraud.

The prosecutors' announcement followed media reports that the Freedom Party funded a lavish lifestyle for Strache and his wife, who is a candidate for the far-right party in this election.

Austria goes to the polls on Sunday.