Far-right Giorgia Meloni set to be elected Italy's first female leader

Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party - which won just 4% of the vote in 2018 - is set to become the biggest Italian group with 22 at 26% of the vote, an exit poll showed

Giorgia Meloni poses with her ballot at a polling station in Rome, Italy (

Image: Reuters)

A far-right party leader looks set to be Italy's first female prime minister, according to an exit poll on Sunday.

Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party won only 4% of the vote in the last national elections in 2018, but this time around it was expected to become the biggest group in Italy with 22% to 26% of the vote.

The global bloc of conservative parties - including Matteo Salvini's League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party - won between 41 and 45 percent, according to an exit poll by public broadcaster RAI.

This is enough to guarantee the control of both houses of parliament.

Meloni voted at a polling station on Sunday (

Picture:

AFP via Getty Images)

Italian electoral law favors groups that manage to create pre-election pacts, awarding them a disproportionate number of seats compared to their vote count.

Full results are expected by early Monday.

However, the transfer of power has traditionally been slow and it could take several weeks before the new government is sworn in.

Meloni, 45, downplays his party's post-fascist roots and describes it as a dominant conservative group.

She pledged to support Western policy on Ukraine and not take undue risks with the eurozone's third-largest economy.