Forza Italia party leader Silvio Berlusconi arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Milan, Italy March 4, 2018. Italians started to cast their ballots Sunday morning leading to the election of a prime minister, two days after politicians made their final campaign for the general election. (Xinhua/Alberto Lingria)
ROME, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Italy's ruling center-left Democratic Party admitted defeat early on Monday morning in one of the country's most divisive national elections amid a far-right, euroskeptic and populist surge.
"This is a very clear and very marked defeat," said Italian Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina, adding that Democratic Party leader and former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will comment further later in the morning.
According to the Interior Ministry, voting booths closed at 11 p.m. local time on Sunday, by which time about 74 percent of over 46 million voters had cast their vote, a slight drop from the 75 percent of eligible voters who participated in the 2013 election.
Italians were called on to choose their representatives in the 315-member Senate and the 630-seat Lower House for a five-year term under a new electoral system which would allocate a little over one-third of seats via a first-past-the-post system, and two-thirds on a proportional basis.
According to exit polls conducted by state-run RAI television, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right four-party coalition, including his moderate Forza Italia (Go Italy) and the League, was in the lead with 33-36 percent of the vote, followed by the populist Five Star Movement with 29-32 percent.
Within the right-wing bloc, the anti-migrant and euroskeptic League won 16 percent, ahead of its main center-right partner Forza Italia, which garnered 14 percent.
The center-left Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni came third by obtaining nearly one fifth of the votes.
With a wide margin, the Five-Star Movement has emerged as Italy's single most popular party. One of its leading members Alessandro Di Battista called the initial results a "triumph" and said "all other parties will have to come to talk to us (to form a government)."
Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, took to Twitter with a simple message that "My first words: THANK YOU!"
The Democratic Party's Lower House leader Ettore Rosato told RAI, "If this is the final result, for us it is a clear defeat and we will move into the opposition."
Rosato said that his party would never cooperate with "extremists" such as the League or the Five Stars.
Predictions also showed that no single party or bloc will win enough seats to be an absolute majority in the parliament.
If confirmed once official results are released later on Monday, none of the three main groups or blocs can rule alone. The country would see weeks of post-election negotiations to forge a new coalition government.
