"This is the time for being responsible," Meloni said, appearing live on television and describing the situation for Italy and the European Union is "particularly complex."
The formation of a ruling coalition with the help of right-wing allies of her Brothers of Italy party could take weeks. If Meloni, 45, succeeds, she would be the first woman to hold the country's premiership. A mandate to try to form a government must be given by Italy's president.
She thanked her main campaign allies and the likely partners essential to her forming a government: anti-migrant League leader Matteo Salvini and conservative former Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Apparently headed for a drubbing in the voting was the euro-sceptic Salvini, who had hoped to become premier.
Projections based on votes counted from nearly two-thirds of the polling stations in Sunday's balloting indicated Meloni's Brothers of Italy party would win some 25.7 per cent of the vote.
That compared to some 19.3 per cent by the closest challenger, the center-left Democratic Party of former Premier Enrico Letta. Salvini's League was projected to win 8.6 per cent of the ballots, roughly half of what he garnered in the last 2018 election.
The projections on Italian state TV had a margin of error range of 2-5 percentage points.
Meloni's meteoric rise in the European Union's third-largest economy comes at a critical time, as much of the continent reels under soaring energy bills, a repercussion of the war in Ukraine, and the West's resolve to stand united against Russian aggression is being tested. In the last election, in 2018, Meloni's party took 4.4 per cent.
More than one-third of the 50.9 million eligible voters boycotted the balloting. Final turnout was 64 per cent, according to the Interior Ministry. That is far lower than the previous record for low turnout, 73 per cent in the 2018 election.
Meloni's party was forged from the legacy of a neo-fascist party formed shortly after the war by nostalgists of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Italy's complex electoral law rewards campaign alliance. Meloni was buoyed going into the vote by joining campaign forces with two longtime admirers of Russian President Vladimir Putin — Salvini and Berlusconi. She herself is a staunch advocate of supplying arms to Ukraine to defend itself against the attacks launched by Russia.
The Democrats went into the vote at a steep disadvantage since they failed to secure a similarly broad alliance with left-leaning populists and centrists.
Italy has had three coalition governments since the last election — each led by someone who hadn't run for office, and that appeared to have alienated many voters, pollsters had said.
"I hope we'll see honest people, and this is very difficult nowadays," Adriana Gherdo said at a polling station in Rome.
What kind of government the eurozone's third-largest economy might be getting was being closely watched in Europe, given Meloni's criticism of "Brussels bureaucrats" and her ties to other right-wing leaders. She recently defended Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban after the European Commission recommended suspending billions of euros in funding to Hungary over concerns about democratic backsliding and the possible mismanagement of EU money.
The election Sunday was being held six months early after Premier Mario Draghi's pandemic unity government, which enjoyed wide citizen popularity, collapsed in late July.
But the three populist parties in his coalition boycotted a confidence vote tied to an energy relief measure. Their leaders, Salvini, Berlusconi and 5-Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, a former premier whose party is the largest in the outgoing Parliament, saw Meloni's popularity growing while theirs were slipping.
Meloni kept her Brothers of Italy party in the opposition, refusing to join Draghi's unity government or Conte's two coalitions that governed after the 2018 vote.
Italian businesses and households are struggling to pay gas and electricity bills, which in some cases are 10 times higher than last year's.
Draghi remains as caretaker until a new government is sworn in.
