THE HAGUE, Netherlands - An exit poll by Dutch national broadcaster NOS on Thursday showed a right-wing lawmaker's party winning just over 15 percent of votes in the country's European Parliament elections.
The NOS poll predicted the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders will win four of the 25 Dutch seats in the European assembly, one behind the Christian Democrats of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
The exit poll bore out pre-vote predictions that right-wing and fringe parties would make gains in many countries, where the economic downturn, cynicism over the union's eastward expansion and worries about relations between Muslims and non-Muslims were expected to fuel a voter backlash against mainstream politicians.
"It is an impressive performance by the Freedom Party," said Wim van der Camp, who led the Christian Democrat campaign.
Wilders, whose party was contesting European elections for the first time, won support from Protestant and Catholic voters disenchanted with what's perceived as the growing influence of the nation's 800,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Morocco and Turkey.
Wilders, creator of a short film that criticizes the Quran as a "fascist book," had urged voters to reject EU involvement in immigration policy and said Turkey should not join the 27-nation bloc.
"Turkey as (an) Islamic country should never be in the EU, not in 10 years, not in a million years," Wilders said.
But Dutch IT manager Olivier van der Post, 40, rejected Wilders' vision.
"I didn't vote for Wilders ... History has shown that if you want prosperity you must open your borders, not close them," he said after voting in Voorburg, a leafy village on the outskirts of The Hague.
Voting was under way in Britain as well, where the far-right British National Party, which bars nonwhite members, was slated to win its first seat. The anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party was also expected to benefit from voter anger at the economic crisis and recent revelations that lawmakers sought public reimbursement for items ranging from horse manure to swimming-pool repairs.
Ivano Chiesa, a 49-year-old hotel proprietor in London, said that he'd voted for the UKIP.
"I don't think our laws should be from Brussels, it's worse than the Parliament here. They really abuse the system," Chiesa said, leaving a polling station in central London's Bloomsbury district.
About 375 million voters across the 27-nation European Union are voting Thursday through Sunday, appointing candidates to 736 seats on the assembly in the second-largest election in the world after India's.
Official results will be announced in Brussels only after voting throughout the bloc is completed.
The NOS poll showed voter turnout in the Netherlands at around 40 percent, unchanged from the last European elections.
In Britain, few people arrived to cast early votes at polling stations in London. The country was also holding elections for about 2,300 of the country's 18,000 seats on local councils in towns and cities.
The 736-seat European Parliament has evolved over the past 50 years from a consultative legislature to one with the right to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws including on immigration, the environment, transport, consumer protection and trade.
The parliament can amend the EU budget -- euro120 billion ($170 billion) this year -- and has a role in appointing the European Commission, the EU administration, and the board of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.
But polls continentwide consistently show that voters consider their MEPs to be overpaid, remote and irrelevant in their daily lives. Such voter disinterest typically fuels low turnouts and stronger-than-usual showings for protest candidates from the hard left and right of the political spectrum.
