Around a third of the council posts in Northern Ireland have been declared.
The first result emerged 45 minutes after counting began on Monday morning to fill 582 seats in 26 councils.
Early trends mirror the results in the NI Assembly poll with the DUP and Sinn Fein well ahead of their rivals.
In the 2005 council elections, the DUP received 30% of the overall vote, Sinn Fein 23%, UUP 18%, SDLP 17% and Alliance 5%.
BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport said the UUP and the SDLP would hope to avoid a repeat of the assembly result.
“In the last council elections the UUP had 18%, but are now on 13%, while the SDLP had 17% but are now on 14% so they could lose out,” he said.
“That would breed discontent among people asking if their leaders are taking them in the right direction.
“That said, the single transferable vote system does save people in the later stages so it could be that the damage won’t be quite as bad as it was at the assembly.”
The final results are not expected until Tuesday.
This table is updated every 15 minutes
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