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MOSCOW, September 15. /ITAR-TASS/. The results of Sunday’s regional election in Russia prove that the presidential approval rating in the country is high, the head of the Institute for Social, Economic and Political Studies said Monday. “The results of the election are a projection of the approval rating for the country’s president and the course that he has taken,” Dmitry Badovsky said at the Regions of Russia media forum. The outcome of the vote could have been forecast already in March when an opinion poll on Crimea’s reunification with Russia showed that over 90% of Russians across the country supported...

SIMFEROPOL, September 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s ruling party United Russia is winning elections to Crimea’s State Council, or legislature, according to exit poll results announced on Sunday after polling stations were closed. Thus, the results of the exit poll demonstrate that the United Russia is claiming 70.36% of the vote. Apart from the United Russia, two more parties - the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and the Communist Party (CPRF) - are surmounting the five-percent barrier with 9.33 and 6.56% of the vote, respectively. Candidates from the rest nine political parties, according to the exit polls, are failing to win seats in...

France's Socialist-led left defeated Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives in the first round of regional elections Sunday, according to partial official results, in a new blow to the increasingly unpopular president. Many voters blame Sarkozy and the governing conservatives for failing to protect jobs amid France's worst economic downturn since World War II, and for not keeping their promise to make the country prosper in the face of growing global competition. With more than 81 percent of votes counted, candidates from the Socialist and other leftist parties won 53.6 percent of the overall vote, according to the Interior Ministry. Sarkozy's conservative UMP...

ROME (Reuters) - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a crushing defeat at Italian regional elections, official results showed on Monday, a huge boost for center-left leader Romano Prodi's hopes of unseating him next year. In what one of his defeated regional governors described as a "massacre," Berlusconi's center-right coalition appeared to have lost 11 of the 13 regions at stake, holding on to just two -- Lombardy and Veneto -- both in its stronghold in the north. Prodi, who had said he would be satisfied by winning just one new seat, was delighted by his landslide victory. "Today we have...

More than 42 million Italians are being called to the polls on Sunday and Monday to elect 14 of the country's 20 regional governments, as well as some provincial and municipal councils. It is also the first major electoral test since Romano Prodi, the former European Commission President, returned from Brussels last year to head the centre-left opposition coalition. Both Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Mr Prodi have played a prominent role in the campaign. The former centre-left Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema, resigned after a poor showing at the last regional elections in 2000. This paved the way for Mr...