The Labour Party has won the 2015 local council elections, winning 54 per cent of the votes, as against the 57% it won four years ago.

The Nationalist Party has expressed its satisfaction that it has halved the gap from the 17% difference of four years ago to 9% this time round. 

Labour have won the Munxar council for the first time and the Floriana council too, breaking the trend of having an independent candidate as mayor.

In the morning, some trouble has erupted on the St Paul's Bay locality, apparently on a vote which a Labour Party agent thought should be among the "dubious". Some shouting erupted behind the perspex but officials from both parties interevened to calm down the situation. The police also intervened around Table 17. The incident took place at about 10.40am.

There were pushes and shoves among the people involved, and the situation resulted because of the way a number 1 was written in the ballot.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that the Labour Party has won the election with a 54% majority, which is 6% less than the overall result achieved in the same election four years ago.

He said that the Labour Party added one locality to its tally, that of Munxar in Gozo. No locality which until today is led by Labour has been lost, he said.

The PM said he was pleased with the result and he said that he will be addressing a press conference later today.

It is the first time that a party in government that won the election with such a gap of between 10 and 13%. This will become clear when the results of the bigger localities are made known.

Nationalist Party secretary general Chris Said said that the Nationalist Party is pleased to have reduced the gap from the Labour Party by half. Four years ago, the PN had lost by 17 per cent, while now the gap between the two parties is more or less 9 per cent.

This has also been confirmed by Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil, who in a comment on TV said that these results show that the Nationalist Party has made great inroads in a number of localities, and has substantially reduced the gap.

Dr Busuttil said that the PN has also won the Mosta locality.

The Nationalist Party has held on to Siggiewi, winning 51% of the votes which should guarantee a majority in this locality.

Five extra votes were initially thought to have been found in the Santa Lucia locality. But it turned out that the error was in the listing of the number of votes, 430, when in fact there were 425.

The sorting and counting process here was suspended for a time until the error was found.

The Nationalist Party has increased its tally in several localities - Senglea by 2%, Marsa by 4%, Dingli by 7%, Luqa by 2%, Gzira by 5%, Swieqi by 10%, Marsaxlokk by 9%, Balzan 9%, Birzebbuga 10%, Paola 6%, Zurrieq 5% and Santa Lucija 5%.

The Labour Party has lost support in Gzira (drop of 4%), Kirkop (drop of 12%) and Dingli (7%).