There was little sign of Fifers rushing to cast their votes today and despite the appeals from the various parties, a low poll was expected.

Some polling stations experienced a steady trickle of voters, but overall, early turnout was disappointing.

At Capshard in Kirkcaldy, staff said voting had been ”slow” and that appeared to be mirrored across the Kingdom.

There was also a low-key response from voters reported in Arbroath, with the turnout said to be ‘low’.

Councillor Alex King, in Arbroath, said at lunchtime that polling was running at about 9% in the town.

Some Dundee polling stations suffered possibly the slowest start ever to an election.

The stations opened at 7am but in the next two hours only a handful of people bothered to vote.

By midday, the situation in the city seemed to have improved slightly, with polling stations reporting that between 4% and 9% of electors had cast their votes.

The council said changes to the postal voting system had made it easier for people to send their vote in rather than visit a polling station.

At the last Euro election, around 2500 people registered to vote in Dundee did so by post, whereas the figure this year is around 7000.

The count of votes will take place across Scotland on Sunday with the results known the following day.

Earlier, polling officers at the Millennium Hall in Birkhill Park said they had never known a quieter start to an election and it was a similar story at Downfield Primary School where polling officers were in little doubt the turnout could end up the lowest ever.

The situation at a city centre polling station was even worse, with votes cast between 7am and 9am still in single figures.

Another Dundee station had just 12 votes cast in the first three hours — around 1% of potential voters in that area.

Dundee City Council, whose chief executive Alex Stephen is the returning officer, described the early turnout as “very, very slow.”

European Parliament elections have consistently failed to capture the imagination of Scottish voters. At the last poll in 1999, fewer than one in four Scots bothered to vote and the fear this time is that the percentage turnout could even drop into the teens.

Scots’ enthusiasm for Europe seems to be diminishing with each election. In comparison with 1999’s 24% turnout, the Euro election of 1994 had a Scottish turnout of around 35%. Scotland will elect seven of the UK’s 78 MEPs to the 732-strong Brussels parliament.