Iran Press/ Europe: Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told the state-run ERT television: "This is a big win for New Democracy. People believed in their programme despite it being vague. "The result has been determined ... but we'll be back."
The conservative ND party was projected to win 39.8 percent of the vote, according to a partial count presented by a Greek Interior Ministry spokesperso, Al jazeera reported.
That would translate into 154 of the Parliament's 300 seats, allowing the opposition party to move into government without the need to cooperate with others.
Its parliamentary clout could still rise, depending on how many smaller parties clear the three-percent hurdle to sit in the Athens legislature.
The early count puts Tsipras' leftist Syriza party on 31.5 percent.
Earlier, an exit poll showed the centre-left Movement for Change at 6.5 to eight percent and the Communists at five to six percent, while the MeRA25 party of former crisis finance minister Yanis Varoufakis could scrape its way into parliament with three to four percent of the vote.
Tsipras, 44, had called the election three months before the end of his term after his left-wing Syriza suffered a crushing 9.5-percentage point defeat in May's European Parliament elections.
In the September 2015 election, Syriza won 149 seats and the ND 76.
Sunday's vote shows the popular discontent with Tsipras after four years of austerity brought by reforms that he was forced to implement in return for an international bailout of the country. Greece sank into a deep financial crisis in 2010 and emerged from the bailout programmes only last August. 213/
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Greeks take to polls with voters expected to oust their Prime Minister
