Hizbullah was poised to seal a win in Lebanon Monday with results for the decade's first general election expected to confirm the Iran-backed party as the main winner.
The polls were also marked by a low turnout of 49.2 percent and the emergence of a civil society movement challenging Lebanon's oligarchs that could clinch a pair of seats in parliament.
Lebanon's sectarian-based power-sharing politics mean no single alliance in the 128-seat parliament will enjoy a stable majority and analysts expect a fragile status quo to be preserved.
Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq announced the turnout figure at a news conference shortly after midnight and appeared to blame it on the new electoral law agreed last year.
"This is a new law and voters were not familiar with it, nor were the heads of polling stations," he said. "Voting operations were very slow."
As provisional estimates trickled in, some candidates' supporters started celebrating in the streets after a polling operation marred only by a few violations but no major incident.