ROME, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Initial exit polls of Italy's national election showed on Sunday that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition was set to win the most votes but might fall short of a majority.
According to exit polls conducted by RAI state television, Berlusconi's four-party coalition, including his moderate Forza Italia (Go Italy!) and the League, was expected to win over 36 percent of the ballots, followed by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement with 29-32 percent.
Within the right-wing bloc, Matteo Salvini's anti-migrant and euroskeptic League won 16 percent, ahead of its main center-right partner Forza Italia, which garnered 14 percent.
With a wide margin, the populist 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)."
Salvini put a simple message on his Twitter account: "My first words: THANK YOU!"
The ruling center-left Democratic Party, led by outgoing Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, came third by obtaining nearly one fifth of the votes.
"If this is the final result, for us it is a clear defeat and we will move into the opposition," the party's Lower House leader Ettore Rosato told RAI.
Initial exit polls appear to confirm the expectation of a possible scenario in which no single party or bloc could win enough seats to be an absolute majority in the parliament.
If confirmed by official results, 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.
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.
Final results of the election are expected to be released on Monday.
Italy's Interior Ministry said the turnout for the election that ended at 11 p.m. local time (2200 GMT) was about 74 percent, a slight drop from the 75 percent of eligible voters who participated in the 2013 election.
