Economy and refugees define Croatian general election

BELGRADE, Serbia

Croatia is voting Sunday in parliamentary elections as the country struggles with the refugee crisis in Europe, high youth emigration and a fragile economy.

At 7 a.m. [0600 GMT] local time, Croatia's almost 3.8 million registered voters started to queue at polling stations to elect 151 members of parliament.

Pre-election polls claim that the ruling left-wing Croatia is Growing coalition led by Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic is neck-and-neck with its conservative opponents in the Croatian Democratic Union.

It is the country’s first election since it joined the European Union two years ago.

More than 2,300 candidates on 166 slates, mostly party tickets, are running. These include political parties and coalitions, independent candidates and hopefuls from the country’s minorities.

This year has seen a large number of female candidates, with over 950 women running for office out of a grand total of just over 2,300 candidates.

The elections are been monitored by more than 13,000 observers.

First results are expected at 10 p.m. local time, Sunday.