Austria is set to be the latest country to reject middle ground electoral politics, looking likely to vote for either a far-Right anti-immigrant gun enthusiast or a radical environmentalist as president today.
If opinion polls are to be believed, Austrians will turn their backs on the two mainstream parties that have dominated the country since the Second World War.
The president is a largely ceremonial figurehead, and the election is unlikely to have a direct effect on government policy.
But with anti-immigrant parties on the rise through Europe and the country already closing its borders to the refugees who poured through on their way to Germany last year, the vote could send shock-waves across the continent.
The strong personalities who have dominated the race are also a clear sign of a country deeply divided by the migrant crisis, and with general elections due in 2018, they could be a sign of things to come.
Norbert Hofer, the far-Right Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) candidate, has carried his Glock pistol around with him on the campaign trail.
He has argued a rise in gun ownership in Austria is a natural reaction to the migrant crisis.
“In uncertain times, people try to protect themselves,” he has said.
Before voting, he was in second place in the opinion polls, with 24 per cent support.
Just ahead of him was Alexander van der Bellen, an independent candidate endorsed by the Green Party, with 26 per cent in a race considered too close to call.
Mr van der Bellen, himself a child of refugees who fled the Soviet annexation of Estonia, is Mr Hofer’s polar opposite on the migrants issue.
He has opposed the Austrian government’s decision to impose a limit on how many asylum-seekers it will allow into the country.
As president, he has even said he would refuse on principle to swear in any government led by Mr Hofer’s far-Right Freedom Party.
Neither is likely to secure enough votes to win the presidency outright, and a second round of voting will probably be needed on May 22.
Imgard Griss, a former supreme court judge currently in third place in the opinion polls with 21 per cent, could yet force her way into the run-off ahead of one of them.
But the candidates of the two established parties that have dominated Austrian politics for 70 years are languishing in fourth and fifth place and look to have no chance.
Between them, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the People’s Party (ÖVP) have ruled Austria since 1945, often in a grand coalition, and one of their candidates has always won the presidency.
But this year voters appear to be deserting them.
“Like elsewhere in Europe, we are witnessing the downfall of the traditional parties,” Peter Hajek, a political analyst, said.
“They have failed to modernise over the past decade and attract new voters.”
A central issue in the campaign has been the migrant crisis, which has seen an extraordinary U-turn by the government.
Last year Werner Faymann, the Social Democrat chancellor, backed Angela Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy in neighbouring Germany.
But as 90,000 asylum-seekers flooded into Austria, public discontent over the policy rose, and Mr Faymann deserted Mrs Merkel, closing Austria’s borders.
Mrs Merkel visited Turkey yesterday (SAT) to shore up the EU’s controversial migrant deal.
But before that deal was secured, it was Mr Faymann’s government which shut down the so-called Balkan Route, leading a coordinated international move to close borders and seal off asylum-seekers in Greece.
The change of policy does not seem to have been enough to win over a deeply divided electorate, however.
Just as German voters inflicted heavy losses on Mrs Merkel in German regional elections dominated by the migrant crisis last month, Austrian voters seem set to send a message of their own.