ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey's ruling party is set for a record landslide win in Sunday's parliamentary polls and a third straight term in power, according to a projection and partial results. A survey of results from sample ballot boxes across the country projected the AKP would get 50.3 percent of the vote, its highest electoral score so far, and enough parliamentary seats to once again form the government on its own. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) was set to finish second with 27.1 percent, followed by the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) with 12.7 percent, according to the projection, conducted by the A&G polling company for CNN Turk television. An estimate of the distribution of seats in the 550-member parliament is hard but the AKP may narrowly clinch the 330-seat majority it is seeking to press ahead with plans to rewrite the constitution, the legacy of a 1980 military coup, A&G chairman Adil Gur said. With more than 60 percent of the vote counted, the AKP was leading with 51.9 percent of the vote, according to results carried on CNN Turk. Its lead is expected to decrease a bit as counting progresses, since the first results come from the rural east, where the party is stronger compared to the more urban west, analysts said. The AKP owes its enduring popularity mostly to economic success and improved public services following years of financial instability that haunted Turkey under shaky coalition governments in the past. Under the AKP, the economy grew by 8.9 percent in 2010, outpacing global recovery, and per capita income has doubled to $10,079. Voting ended at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) across the country, where more than 50 million people were eligible to vote, out of a population of some 73 million. Earlier, an ecstatic crowd burst into cheers and applause as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived to vote in a school in Istanbul's Uskudar district, an AKP stronghold. "Turkey is proud of you," the crowd chanted, as the prime minister shook hands with supporters. His economic credits aside, Erdogan - once the driving force of EU-sought reforms - has come under fire for autocratic tendencies and growing intolerance of criticism. With dozens of journalists in jail, the opposition is alarmed also over creeping restrictions on the Internet and an unprecedented outbreak of compromising wiretaps and videos of opposition figures circulating online. Sex tapes forced 10 top MHP members to quit the election race, following a similar scandal last year that saw the veteran CHP leader resign. Led by a popular new chairman, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the secularist centre-left CHP built its election campaign on pledges of democratic reform, arguing the AKP is turning Turkey into a "police state". "Enough is enough. We are fed up with intimidation. I want a country where I can live without fear," Meryem, a teacher in her 40s, said in Ankara's upscale district of Cankaya after casting a vote for the CHP. Erdogan has promised a more liberal constitution but has refused to specify what the overhaul would entail, fanning speculation with his advocacy of a presidential system for Turkey - presumably with himself at the helm. The AKP needs at least 330 seats to amend the constitution without support from other parties and put it to a referendum. A two-thirds majority of 367 seats would enable the party to pass the amendments unilaterally. Kurdish-backed candidates running as independents to circumvent the 10-percent national treshhold were expected to win up to 30 seats, according to the partial results. Violence marred voting in Ankara, where opposition supporters attacked AKP members over an alleged attempt to sneak fake ballots papers into a polling station, Anatolia news agency reported. Police fired shots in the air to end the melee and put the AKP members on a bus as enraged opposition supporters pelted the vehicle with stones, Anatolia said, adding that 14 people were detained. In the mainly Kurdish city of Batman, police detained another 34 people on charges they threatened voters to support nationalist Kurdish candidates.