- Were I not so busy, I'd be biting my nails to ragged stumps:
"Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition may narrowly retain control of both houses of parliament, according to projections from the Nexus pollsters.And that's on a trunout of an estimate 85%. EIGHTY-FIVE... Of course, in this country, if Labour had a 0.3% lead they'd probably still end up with a majority of about 50 seats - based on those figures, Berlusconi would have a majority of about seven.
"Earlier, exit polls pointed to a narrow lead for his centre-left challenger, Romano Prodi...
"The Nexus projections, carried on the state broadcaster Rai, gave Mr Berlusconi's forces 49.9% in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house), and Mr Prodi's bloc 49.6%"
Still - he could still lose. Fingers crossed, eh?
Update: Damn. Forgot about Berlusconi's recent reforms. See Phil in the comments for more likely possible majorities...
5 Comments:
You're wrong about the majority, I'm afraid. Part of the 'proportional' system brought in by Berlusconi - and cobbled together in haste by various right-wingers, including one Northern League politician who's said that he wanted to leave the electoral system in a mess - is a premio di maggioranza: the winning coalition is guaranteed a minimum of 340 seats out of 617, a majority of 63. So one possible result - and it's looking like a distinct possibility at the moment - is
Casa delle Liberta: 49.9% (340 seats)
Unione: 49.8% (277 seats)
Let's hope it doesn't come to that. (A 49.9% victory/340-seat victory for Prodi would be deeply embarrassing, but at least it'd be a victory for Prodi...)
As I write the la Repubblica projection is
Casa (Berlusconi): 49.8%
Unione (Prodi): 49.8%
They're now showing no overall winner.
I should be optimistic; to hit those figures the balance of votes would need to change from roughly 51/49 - as seen in the first 50,000 polling stations - to 47/53 in the last 10,000. It's a big shift - but it's not quite big enough to discount. By the same token, early forecasts of a win on votes for the Unione in the Senate - although not on seats, for some reason - now look mistaken; the Casa look like getting a 51% share there, whatever happens in the Camera.
10% of the vote left to count and the difference in the votes counted is down to 0.7%. I can't look...
Nearly 2 a.m. and they still haven't finished the bloody count. The Senate's done and dusted - 153 to the Casa, 148 to the Unione. Wrong way round, but livable with - the parties of the Casa will be fighting like rats in a sack after the election, so I can't see them putting up a united opposition if the Unione has a majority in the Camera.
Unfortunately that's looking like a big 'if'. With 35 polling stations still to count (out of 60,828), the share's standing at 49.8% Unione, 49.7% Casa. Even assuming that those figures have been rounded up or down and the gap's really even smaller, I can't see the Casa clawing back a majority out of those last 35 sezioni. So it looks as if the Unione has got a majority in the popular vote - but whether they've got a majority of the seats is another question. Let's hope so.
Its just gone 2am here in London and Romano Prodi is claiming victory (in the lower house at least). He has given his victory speech. Berlusconi's lot are disputing the result. This is nerve wracking. Fingers crossed.
Senate isn't done yet - some expat seats to go, Prodi likely to take enough of them for a slim lead in the senate.
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