Italy on Sunday will vote for the first time under a new electoral law which has made the result difficult to predict and increased the chances of no party winning an overall majority.
The election looks like a three-way race between a right-wing coalition led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the centre-left Democratic Party.
The final polls issued before a campaign ban came into force last month put billionaire Berlusconi’s coalition in front, with 37 per cent.
But they also predicted that the bloc would fall short of the majority required to form a government.
Under the complex electoral law introduced last year, one third of seats in parliament will be attributed on a first-past-the-post basis while the remaining two-thirds are divided up by proportional representation.
The new law favours coalitions and limits the chances of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which has ruled out any post-election deal with other parties, but it has made it difficult to predict the margins needed to take power.