Other candidates have chosen more traditional venues for the evening: the centre-right's Silvio Berlusconi will be waiting it out at his villa in Arcore near Milan, while centre-left rival Walter Veltroni will be standing by at his party's offices in Rome dubbed the "Loft".

Far-right leader Daniela Santanche says she won't stray far from her home in Milan, while Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and centrist leader Pier Ferdinando Casini will both be holed up at their respective party headquarters.

Angry at plans to build a landfill site nearby, one group of young Neapolitans  gathered 600 election identification cards and sent them to the Italian president instead of using them to vote.

"I'm not going to vote because I don't feel represented by the institutions and because there is no-one that worries about preserving our rights," group member Sebastian Perrone told the Ansa news agency. 

Another angry Neapolitan took an even more novel approach: he ate his ballot form at the polling booth.

Finally, motorists on the A14 highway in Italy were greeted on Sunday morning by two large banners spray painted with the words : "Enough with politics, We want colonels!" They were quickly taken down by police.

A popular "anti-politics" movement led by figures like comedian Beppe Grillo has swept up about 6 to 8 percent of voters, estimates the pollster Luigi Crespi. He estimates the number of blank ballots will nearly triple to about 1 million during the April 13-14 election from about 400,000 in the last parliamentary election two years ago.