Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy emerged as the biggest party in elections in Italy on Sunday, according to unofficial opinion polls, and looks set to take office in a coalition with the far-right League of Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
The exit polls showed the centre right coalition sweeping to power with between 41 and 45% of the vote.
The centre-left block got just 25.5 and 29.5%.
The surprise of the night was that Salvini's Leagu was projected to win only between 8.5 and 12.5% of the votes and Forza Italia 7%. Brothers of Italy was projected to win 25%.
Meloni, 45, who campaigned on a motto of "God, country and family",will be Italy's first female prime minister and the first from the far right.
"Today you can participate in writing history," she tweeted earlier in the day.
But turnout was lower than in the 2018 elections, according to interior ministry figures, which put it at 51 percent at 7pm -- four hours before polls closed -- down from 58 percent.
Many voters are expected to pick Meloni, "the novelty, the only leader the Italians have not yet tried", Wolfango Piccoli of the Teneo consultancy told AFP.
Brussels and the markets are watching closely, amid concern that Italy -- a founding member of the European Union -- may be the latest country to veer hard right, less than two weeks after the far-right outperformed in elections in Sweden.
If she wins, Meloni will take over as her country battles rampant inflation and a winter energy crisis linked to the conflict in Ukraine.
The Italian economy, the third largest in the eurozone, rebounded after the pandemic but is saddled with a debt worth 150 percent of gross domestic product.
- 'Limited room for manoeuvre' -
Brothers of Italy, which has roots in the post-fascist movement founded by supporters of dictator Benito Mussolini, won just four percent of the vote in 2018 and has never been in power.
Meloni, whose own experience of government is limited to a ministerial post in the 2008 Berlusconi government, has dedicated her campaign to trying to prove she is up to the challenge.
She has moderated her views over the years, notably abandoning her calls for Italy to leave the EU's single currency.
However, she insists her country must stand up for its national interests, backing Hungary in its rule of law battles with Brussels.
Her coalition wants to renegotiate the EU's post-pandemic recovery fund, arguing that the almost 200 billion euros Italy is set to receive should take into account the energy crisis aggravated by the Ukraine war.
But "Italy cannot afford to be deprived of these sums", political sociologist Marc Lazar told AFP, which means Meloni actually has "very limited room for manoeuvre".
The funds are tied to a series of reforms only just begun by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who called snap elections in July after his national unity coalition collapsed.
Despite her euroscepticism, Meloni strongly supports the EU's sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, although her allies are another matter.
Berlusconi, the billionaire former premier who has long been friends with Vladimir Putin, faced an outcry this week after suggesting the Russian president was "pushed" into war by his entourage.
- 'Woke ideologies' -
A straight-speaking Roman raised by a single mother in a working-class neighbourhood, Meloni rails against what she calls "LGBT lobbies", "woke ideology" and "the violence of Islam".
She has vowed to stop the tens of thousands of migrants who arrive on Italy's shores each year, a position she shares with Salvini, who is currently on trial for blocking charity rescue ships when he was interior minister in 2019.
The centre-left Democratic Party says Meloni is a danger to democracy.
It also claims her government would pose a serious risk to hard-won rights such as abortion and will ignore global warming, despite Italy being on the front line of the climate emergency.
On the economy, Meloni's coalition pledges to cut taxes while increasing social spending, regardless of the cost.
The last opinion polls two weeks before election day suggested one in four voters backed Meloni, but around 20 percent of voters were undecided.
In particular, support appears to be growing for the populist Five Star Movement in the poor south.
The next government is unlikely to take office before the second half of October.