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The two parties in Greece's outgoing coalition government have seen their share of the vote plummet as voters rejected austerity measures aimed at preventing the country defaulting on its debt.
The Socialist Pasok party and the conservatives of New Democracy (ND) secured just 32.4% between them, down from 77.4% in 2009, according to interior ministry figures based on 95% of the vote.
The figures leave the two parties unable to form a coalition on their own and makes it extremely difficult for them to implement the public spending cuts agreed in return for bailouts from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.
More than 50 percent of Greeks cast votes for parties opposing the public spending cuts.
They include a new nationalist party called Independent Greeks and the staunchly Stalinist Communist party who between them could elect nearly 60 deputies.
The extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party was also set to win enough votes to enter parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years.
An exit poll suggested it will receive 6%-8% of the votes amid rising immigration and crime concerns.
Golden Dawn's policies include placing landmines on the Turkish border to stem immigration.
New Democracy will be given the first chance to try to form a coalition government after scraping to first place in the election with 19.6% of the vote, its lowest ever share.
Party leader Antonis Samaras said he would seek piece together a unity government to keep Greece in the euro and seek better terms from the country's EU-IMF creditors on growth.
"We are ready to assume the responsibility of forming a national salvation government with two exclusive goals: to keep the country in the euro and amend the policies of the memorandum," he said.
However, if in three days Mr Samaras has been unable to form a government the mandate passes to the left-wing anti-austerity Syriza, which won 51 seats with 16.6% of the vote.
Syriza's leader Alexis Tsipras said: "The parties that signed the memorandum (with the EU and the IMF) are now a minority.
"The public verdict has de-legitimised them."
In a week's time, the new Greek government is supposed to redeem 436 million euros (£351m) of debt, held by private creditors who turned down a swap last month
It must also recapitalise Greek banks that sustained heavy losses in that swap, which cut some 106bn euros from Greece's near- and mid-term debt of more than 350bn euros.
And Greece's previous administration had already promised its EU-IMF creditors that in June it would find another 11.5 billion euros ($9.3bn) in savings through 2014.
In comments widely quoted by Greek newspapers on Saturday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that if the new government did not meet its commitments the country would "bear the consequences."
