Labour predict they may secure nine of the country’s 13 electoral districts, with the traditionally blue twelfth electoral district turning red.
The party won its third successive general election on Sunday, with the focus subsequently switching to the vote-counting process and calculating the margin of victory.
PL electoral sources told Times of Malta that early indications pointed to them secure districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12 and 13.
Those projections were provided at around 4.20 pm and are preliminary, as they are based on samples of ballots taken across the country.
The traditionally blue twelfth district, which includes Mellieħa, St Paul’s Bay and parts of Naxxar, is polling very close, with Labour edging slightly ahead as sampling continues.
At 78%, District 12 had the lowest voter turnout this election.
In 2017, the PN won the district with a narrow margin of just 800 votes, capturing three seats to Labour's two.
Should district 12 turn to Labour, that would leave the PN with just four districts - 8, 9, 10, and 11 - secured and would mean that Labour will have secured an additional district in every election since 2013.
In 2013, the Labour Party won seven districts to the PN's six. Five years later, it captured eight districts to the PN's five.
A 41,000 gap prediction
As of 4pm, the PL was predicting a gap in excess of 41,000 votes between the two parties.
Louis Gatt, who heads the PL’s electoral office, told Times of Malta that since the vote-counting process had changed with the introduction of electronic counting machines, so too had the sampling method carried out by political parties.
Traditionally, parties would take samples from packets of 50 ballots taken from different boxes across all the districts.
This time, the vote-counting process is going through entire boxes at one go.
Malta has 742 boxes of ballots from 116 voting stations that were open to the electorate on Saturday.
Gatt said this change in process, means that as further boxes are opened the prediction could change.
However, he added that the PL had waited until more than 200 boxes were opened before making its prediction, saying this was a healthy sample upon which to base its prediction.
An official electoral result is expected in the early hours of Monday morning.