June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Allies of U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tumbled in European Parliament elections as voters across Europe protested everything from rising unemployment to the Iraq war.
Blair's Labour party won 22 percent, tying the opposition Conservatives and just ahead of the 20 percent of the U.K. Independence Party, which wants Britain to pull out of the European Union, a YouGov poll for Sky News showed. Schroeder's Social Democrats picked up 21.3 percent, the party's worst showing in a Germany-wide election since World War II, ARD television projections showed. The opposition Christian Democrats scored 45 percent, ARD said.
Exit polls from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia pointed to setbacks for ruling parties there, as the European Union's first elections since it expanded to 25 nations last month shaped up as a continent-wide repudiation of a 9.1 percent jobless rate and the support of some countries for the Iraq war.
``It's clear that people are once again using the European election to send a message to their own government,'' Martin Schulz, the German Social Democrats' top candidate for the EU parliament, told German television. The European Parliament will announce the projected distribution of seats at 10:45 p.m. in Brussels. The EU-wide vote has no direct influence on the composition of national governments, though it acts as a barometer of public opinion.
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