Department of International Relations - Events & Trips

An Election to Remember

By: Mehtab Dere

At 2:45 pm on Monday, the 10th of April, the IR department took over the student lounge. Prof. Walston had organized a conference in anticipation of the election results, and the room was filled with students, Professors, and journalists, all eagerly awaiting the release of the first exit polls. At exactly 3:01 pm the first exit polls regarding the Italian elections were released. At first glance they seemed to confirm what had been predicted by the opinion polls prior to the elections and also by many political analysts, including Prof. Walston and the students in his Italian Political Thought class – a victory for Romano Prodi’s center left coalition by about 4-5 % points over Berlusconi’s center right coalition. This led to much celebration among Prodi’s supporters (which included about 90% of the people in the room) in anticipation of a decisive victory. RAI news 24 was at hand to cover the reactions of people at AUR to the election results. At around 5:30 they interviewed Professor Walston and Prof. Thomassen in the computer room, this was broadcast live on their channel, and both Professors gave their insightful opinions regarding the implications of the perceived victory. After this broadcast, everyone returned to the student lounge to continue following the results. These reports showing a victory for the center left kept coming in consistently until about 7 o’clock in the evening around which time people began to make their way home.
However, gradually from around that time the news channels showed that upon actual counting, the exit polls were way off the mark. In actuality the race between Prodi and Berlusconi was too close to call. The red belt including Emilia Romagna, Toscana and Umbria were never in doubt (and were won by the Left). However, some of the crucial areas including Sicilia and Piemonte were won by the Right, making the fight extremely close. The difference in the exit polls and the actual results were probably because of the fact that most of them were conducted on Sunday; and it was widely thought that the demographic who voted for the Left predominantly voted on Sunday, and among the people voting on Monday, the majority voted for the Right.
In effect then this caused a discrepancy in terms of the perceived result. The actual decisive results for the Senate and the Chamber were not released until about 3 o’clock in the morning of the 11th. These showed that Berlusconi had won the Senate by one seat and Prodi had won the Camera (the lower house) by 0.1 %. Although Prodi had only won by 0.1% the new electoral law automatically gave him a total of 55% of the total seats in the house. Therefore the center left had effectively gained 340 seats in contrast to the 277 seats won by the right. However, there was one extremely important factor which hadn’t yet been decided – the votes of the Italians living abroad. A total of 6 seats in the Senate and 12 in the Camera had been reserved for the candidates representing the Italians living abroad, and these hadn’t yet been counted. For technical reasons, these votes would not be counted when calculating the winner of the bonus seats in the Camera. The Senate however was a different matter. Early in the morning of the 11th, the news channels showed that Berlusconi had a slender lead in the Senate, if this was to remain it would mean that Italy had a split parliament – one house with the left and one with the right (something that had never happened here before) – an unacceptable event as it would hinder the proper functioning of any government due to the fact that both houses of parliament enjoy equal powers in Italy.
Finally at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon of the 11th, news was received that of the 6 seats in the senate reserved for foreign candidates, 4 had been won by the Left, one by the Right, and one candidate had decided to remain independent. This meant that the Left had 158 seats in the Senate and the Right had 156. The Left therefore had won both houses of parliament, albeit by very narrow margins. Upon receiving this information, Prodi declared a victory for the Left and stated that he would form a government. It is ironic that the legislation pushed by the Berlusconi government; to extend voting rights to Italians abroad, and the change in the electoral law giving the winner of even one extra vote the 55% majority, is what effectively has led to the defeat of his coalition.
Romano Prodi faces many challenges in the coming weeks; the biggest being the fact that his coalition is made up of many parties, which find it hard to agree among themselves on many issues, an event which is not surprising as some of the parties such as the Refounded Communists, the Udeur and Margherita have very different ideologies. I addition to that, there are calls for a recount by Berlusconi because of the fact the overall more than one million votes have been annulled. This is put into context by remembering that Prodi only won the chamber by the slim margin of 24,000 votes. To add to the situation is the fact that the President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, is set to retire on the 18th of May. This is an added complication as it is the President who has the responsibility of inviting the leader of the majority party to form a government.
Now we can only wait and see how Prodi, Berlusconi, and the Italian people respond to the situation.