Posted on 04/10/2006 12:32:30 PM PDT by slowhand520
Just like the 2004 US elections. The exit polls here had the Prodi leading Berlusconi 54-45. My question is... are exit polls the same in every country?
ROME (AFP) - A dramatic shift in Italian vote projections indicated Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may defy all predictions and cling to power in both houses of parliament.
If borne out in the full count, it would be a stunning reversal of fortune for opposition leader Romano Prodi, whose centre-left Union coalition had been ahead in exit polls and early partial results.
With the picture changing by the hour, thousands of Prodi supporters who had flocked to his campaign headquarters in anticipation of a victory were forced to put celebrations on hold.
Earlier, the opposition backers had voiced both jubilation and relief at indications of an end to Berlusconi's flamboyant five-year reign. Opposition officials, though, had been more careful.
"We're still very cautious, but if these indications are confirmed, that would mean that Italy had decided to turn the page and begin a new era," said a spokesman at Prodi's headquarters.
Within hours, the vote projections had lurched in the prime minister's favor.
Prodi's office announced it had postponed his planned address to supporters in the square outside his headquarters from 6:30 pm (1630 GMT) to 8:30 pm (1830 GMT).
Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, returned to Rome from his mansion in Arcore, outside Milan, in the afternoon, but refrained from making any comments.
A Nexus projection at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) for Italian state television showed Berlusconi's House of Freedoms alliance would take the majority of seats in the race for the Senate.
Based on the projection made with nearly nine-tenths of the votes counted, Berlusconi's House of Freedoms would take 158 seats in the upper house Senate against 152 for the Union.
That was followed by another projection showing Berlusconi edging in front by 49.9 percent to 49.6 percent in the lower house Chamber of Deputies. Vote counting continued into the night.
Neither of the rival coalitions would be able to govern without a majority in both houses.
"You can't say that the leftist Union has a majority to govern," said Andrea Ronchi of the National Alliance, a key ally of Berlusconi.
"We are neck and neck in the Senate, and it's a great result," he told reporters.
Partial results announced earlier in the evening, based on a smaller sample of about one-sixth of the vote, gave 54.2 percent to Prodi's centre-left and 45.2 percent to Berlusconi's House of Freedoms in the lower house.
At that point, the centre-left was shown to have a a wafer-thin majority in the Senate, 158 seats to 151, with about half the votes counted for the 315-seat upper house.
However, the results did not include the six Senate seats reserved for representatives of some three million Italians living abroad, who were able to vote in a general election for the first time.
The Senate count was unpredictable because the seats, unlike for the lower house, are awarded on a region by region basis, and a few strongly centre-right regions were likely to be pivotal.
Berlusconi's home region of Lombardy has the largest seat-allocation of Italy's 20 regions, with 47 seats.
Earlier, a Nexus exit poll for state broadcaster RAI had shown Prodi's multi-party coalition -- which includes Communists as well as Catholics and liberals -- would win a working majority in both houses of parliament.
At the time, Senator Paolo Guzzanti of the prime minister's Forza Italia party appeared to have given up hope. "Our coalition has lost the elections," he told AFP. "We expected something like this because we've lost every (local) election since 2001."
Forza Italia campaign analyst Denis Verdini admitted that the "exit polls are unfavourable, but we are remaining very cautious."
"What's interesting for us is that the turnout figure is above 83 percent, which is very good for us," he added. "One vote could make all the difference in the Chamber of Deputies."
First official results from the two-day election were due late Monday, but counting was going more slowly than expected as darkness fell over Rome.
Turnout was 83.6 percent, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu announced.
The usually reserved Prodi -- a 66-year-old economist who unseated Berlusconi in the 1996 election -- told AFP early in the day he was "confident, very confident" of maintaining his hex on the media magnate.
In a vitriolic election campaign focused on the country's dire economic performance, Berlusconi hoped to swing the vote by promising to abolish a council tax on home owners.
Prodi pledged to revive an inheritence tax, but after pressure from the centre-right clarified that this would only be for the rich. He also promised to cut taxes on employers to reduce the cost of labour.
Most of all, the campaign was characterised by insults, notably Berlusconi's use of a vulgar term to describe centre-left voters.
Wait a minute. That can't be so....the news media says it's not biased in favor of the left and media polls are accurate.
What does 'Clymers' mean?
Yes, literally, but "cojones" in Spanish it doesn't have the derogatory meaning.
I was looking for an insult that would mean something similar in English and would be similarly vulgar.
Clymers = A******s
You're right, it was the same reason I used "Clymers", but you are closer anatomically. ;o)
What were the previous numbers for senate and house before the election? Wanted to see how much they moved
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