After prodding voters to turn out in their first ever European elections, governments in the Baltic republics discovered Sunday that the historic ballot for the European Parliament might shake their grip on national power.

One day after polling closed in Latvia, opposition parties said they were ready to form a new government Sunday, while Estonia's 14 month-old government braced for European losses and Lithuania's European ballot was coloured by a simultaneous presidential election.

With results due to be announced in Latvia late Sunday, an exit poll predicted that rightist opposition parties would sideline the ruling Green and centrist coalition from the country's nine European Parliament seats.

"I am sure, we will start to talk about the necessity of forming a new government," Einars Repse, leader of the centre-right New Era party, who was pushed to resign as prime minister in February, told AFP.

New Era was in second place in a Baltic News Service exit poll with 19.6 percent, behind the right-wing opposition free market-oriented Fatherland and Freedom Party (30.5 percent).

In Estonia, where pre-election polls indicated a hard time for Prime Minister Juhan Parts, only a trickle of voters braved the spring drizzle as voting got underway Sunday.

Despite the presence of top model Carmen Kass low down the list of candidates, by noon turnout had reached only 13.5 percent, less than half that of last year's national elections, Estonia's central election committee said.

"There is no wonder about it, Europe is showing us the way even in low voting activity." Tallinn polling station chief Jaan Kollist told AFP.

Thirty-two year-old chemist Signe Leito told AFP: "I went to vote just to raise the percentage. It shows Estonia in bad light to Europe, if we have such a low participation in elections."

But there were signs that the electoral diehards were more intent on handing most of the country's six European seats to the leftist opposition.

A pre-election opinion poll by EOS Gallup indicated that Parts's rightist Res Publica party was only fourth in Estonians' pecking order with a forecast 12 percent of the vote.

The Social Democrats, normally a minor political force, were set to gain 21 percent, followed by the left-leaning coalition partner, the People's Union (20 percent) and the opposition leftist Centre Party (18 percent), the poll added.

Yet, on Friday Parts, President Arnold Ruutel and Estonia's top parliamentary official urged their 874,472 voters to cast their ballots, warning that "Estonia's vitality also depends on Europe's future".

Although voting was brisk in Lithuania, pre-election opinion polls predicted that a party set up by a populist Russian born millionaire parliamentarian would come out on top with 20 percent, leaving the ruling Social Democrats behind.

Officials and voters admitted the likely explanation for the largest Baltic republic bucking the general trend towards apathy was the simultaneous presidential race.

"European issues are much more complicated and they (voters) think first about local issues," Lithuania's election chief Zenonas Vaigauskas said.

Julius Labanauskas, a 52-year-old Vilnius bus driver, told AFP he would be focussing on the "real power" that would be granted to one of the five national presidential candidates.

"I have heard there will be some 800 parliamentarians in Brussels, so what could our 13 do there?" he added.