Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Italian Elections Latest



I wonder what the Italian for 'Hanging Chad' is?

5 comments:

Guido Fawkes said...

I feel the political totty commentary on Sky Italy is something we need to emulate.

Their equivalent of Peter Snow has a great pair of swingometers.

dizzy said...

a sensible policy for a happier Britain to be sure.

Anonymous said...

"Hanging Chad"? Are his posts on Conservative Home winding you up that much?

Anonymous said...

DM Andy here.

Close election, must have been nerve jangling for the supporters of both sides.

My Italian isn't good enough to work out if the numbers include the overseas vote but if it doesn't then it's still undecided.

The Union won the popular vote but in a much smaller margin than the exit polls predicted - only 62,000 votes. The voting system slightly favoured Berlusconi, The Prodi coalition received 623,000 votes for parties too small to receive any seats while the Berlusconi coalition (House of Freedoms) wasted 610,000 votes. That brought the winning margin down to 49,000 votes.

As I said yesterday, Prodi needs three of his minor coalition partners to make it to the 2% threshold. Three of them did, but the Greens only managed it by 20,000 votes. If the overseas vote knocks them under 2% then Popular-UDEUR (the best party below the threshold) no longer get any representation in the Chamber of Deputies, their 533,000 votes are discarded and Burlesconi would win easily.

Anonymous said...

"As I said yesterday, Prodi needs three of his minor coalition partners to make it to the 2% threshold. Three of them did, but the Greens only managed it by 20,000 votes. If the overseas vote knocks them under 2% then Popular-UDEUR (the best party below the threshold) no longer get any representation in the Chamber of Deputies, their 533,000 votes are discarded and Burlesconi would win easily. "

Actually Italian electoral system doesn't work in this way.
Overseas votes are counted apart and they aren't added to the rest.
Then votes for party under the threshold aren't discarded from the total of the coalition. So even with the Greens under 2%, Udeur votes would have qualified for the Union total (like votes for Pensionati and other fringe parties counted).