The Latest: Hungary’s right-wing party leader is hopeful

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The Latest on Hungary’s parliamentary election (all times local):

10:45 a.m.

The leader of Hungary’s right-wing nationalist Jobbik party says he expects a “surprise” result in the parliamentary elections.

Gabor Vona said Sunday he would resign and put his fate in the hands of his party if they don’t win but plans to remain in politics nonetheless.

Vona said: “I feel a surprise and a Jobbik breakthrough can be expected in the election.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party is expected to win the majority of the 199 parliamentary seats, with Vona’s Jobbik and a left-wing alliance of the Socialist Party and the Dialogue party led by Gergely Karacsony considered the leading challengers.

In the past few years, Vona, who has been party chairman since 2006, has pushed the party to abandon its frequently anti-Roma and anti-Semitic views and toward more a mainstream conservative direction.

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10:15 a.m.

Voter turnout in the first hours of voting in Hungary’s election is the highest since 1998. According to the National Election Office, 13.17 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots by 9 a.m. (0700GMT), while in 2006 turnout was 11.39 percent at the same hour.

Gergely Karacsony, the leading left-wing candidate for prime minster, said Sunday the high turnout was good news for those in favor of preventing Prime Minister Viktor Orban from winning his third consecutive term.

Karacsony, who heads the joint list of the Socialist Party and the Dialogue party, also said President Janos Ader, a former lawmaker for Orban’s Fidesz party, had “omitted a very serious task” by not calling for Hungarians to cast their ballots in the election.

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8 a.m.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cast his vote in the parliamentary election, saying the ballot is about “Hungary’s future.”

Orban, who voted with his wife at a Budapest school near their home, told a crowd of reporters that he will “respect the decision” of the Hungarian voters.

Orban, who seeking his third consecutive term, and fourth overall since 1998, says he’s voting early so he could keep campaigning until polling stations close Sunday evening.

Orban, who focused his campaign on his harsh anti-migration stance, says it’s a “misunderstanding” that his frequently harsh criticism of Brussels was directed at the whole of the European Union.

He says “the EU is not in Brussels. The EU is in Berlin, in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Prague and in Bucharest. The European Union does not mean Brussels, it means the European capitals together.”