R
"You asked about our elections. It's kind of hard to explain, actually. In general, things are more or less the same, but specifically they aren't. One of the elections was for the European Parliament. Berlusconi's party lost 4 points, from 25% of the votes to 21%, but these percentage points went to other right coalition parties. The large left coalition group got approximately the same amount of votes that the sum of its individual parties had before, but it now considers itself the largest "party" in Italy, with 31.1%. The count is not totally completed, but I believe the Italian reps are more or less equally divided between right and left (25 of one and 26 of the other, or something like that). Berlusconi, who "megalomaniacally" ran in several cities using his name as head of his party's list for the European Parliament, knowing he could not take on that obligation, lost in all of them. With respect to our last political elections, his party has lost an average of 9%. We also had a vote for some communes and provinces. For those it looks like many more left candidates than right have already won, with no necessity for run offs. (In the big cities, the right has gone down 12 to 18%). For other contests, there will be run offs in a couple of weeks. (That's set for the 26th and 27th, too)!"