European Elections: UK sceptics surge, Dutch right-wing stumbles as EU votes

Difficult vote in Britain:  Choosing between two evils

Britain's Eurosceptic UK Independence Party made strong gains but their Dutch counterparts stumbled in elections to the European Parliament that are expected to produce a widespread anti-EU vote thanks in part to a low turnout.

Nigel Farage's UKIP, which wants to pull Britain out of the European Union and severely restrict immigration, grabbed seats from both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party in local elections held at the same time as the EU vote on Thursday, partial results showed.

If those scores are confirmed or amplified in the European ballot, from which results will only be released late on Sunday, it could increase pressure on Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to take a harder line on reducing the EU's powers.

"Looking at the average vote shares across the country, and without wishing to count any chickens before they're hatched, it looks pretty good," an ebullient Farage said as evidence of his anti-establishment party's surge trickled in.

Bad night for Geert Wilders

By contrast, far right Dutch populist Geert Wilders, whose anti-EU, anti-Islam Freedom Party had been forecast to top the poll in the Netherlands, was beaten into fourth place by pro-European parties in a surprise reverse, according to exit polls.

His PVV was projected to get just 12.2 percent, behind the centrist Democrats 66, the centre-right Christian Democrats and Prime Minister Mark Rutte's right-wing liberals.

Wilders blamed the disappointing score on a low turnout of around 35 percent, saying that "by staying home (voters) showed their loathing for and disinterest in the European Union. The Netherlands has not become more pro-European."

Political analysts said the poor showing by the PVV may not be mirrored by UKIP or the National Front in France, but said it could still alter interpretations of the elections as a whole.

"The results will have a large effect on the media and political frame of the European elections, which was supposed to be 'far-right wins big' and will now look more critically at the actual results," said Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia in the United States.

Voters in Ireland and the Czech Republic began casting their ballots on Friday but most of the EU's 28 nations hold the election on Sunday. Some 388 million Europeans are eligible to vote for 751 members of the parliament, which is an equal co-legislator with member governments on most EU laws.

Read more: UK sceptics surge, Dutch right-wing stumbles as EU votes | Reuters