Italy election: Deadlock after protest vote

 

Exit polls initially gave Pier Luigi Bersani's centre-left bloc clear victory

Italy's parliamentary elections have ended in stalemate and the possibility of a hung parliament.

With all domestic votes counted, Pier Luigi Bersani's centre-left has narrowly won the lower house but ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right is challenging for control of the Senate.
Control of both houses is needed to govern and a Berlusconi official said the election was "too close to call".

A protest movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo won a quarter of the vote. The outcome of the election, which comes amid a deep recession and tough austerity measures, was so close that a final, formal declaration from the interior ministry was not expected for some hours.

"It is clear to everyone that a very delicate situation is emerging for the country," said centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani as the last of the votes were being counted.

Angelino Alfano, secretary of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said the result was "extraordinary", and he urged the interior ministry not to declare a final result because of the possible margin of error.

With returns from all polling stations processed, the interior ministry figures gave Mr Bersani's centre-left bloc 29.54% of the vote for the lower house (Chamber of Deputies), barely ahead of the 29.18% polled by Mr Berlusconi's bloc. The results from votes cast outside Italy are still to be collected.

Mr Bersani also won the national vote for the Senate, but is expected to lose out to Mr Berlusconi because the winning majority in the upper house is decided on a regional basis. Mr Berlusconi was heading for victory in three of the four big regions - Lombardy in the north, Campania in the centre, and Sicily in the south.
 
Initial exit polls on Monday afternoon gave Mr Bersani's bloc a clear victory, prompting the Milan stock market to soar by nearly 4%.  But as the close result became clear the markets fell back. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.55% and shares in Tokyo opened sharply lower.
The apparent split between left and right in the eurozone's third largest economy is likely to cause great anxiety among leaders in other EU member states.

Mr Berlusconi, 76, left office in November 2011, facing claims of economic mismanagement as the eurozone struggled to contain Italy's debt crisis. Italians have had more than a year of technocratic government under Mario Monti. But his attempts to reduce spending caused widespread public resentment and his decision to head a centrist list in the parliamentary elections attracted little more than 10% of the vote.
"Some supposed we'd get a slightly better result but I am very satisfied, we are very satisfied," he said.

In a surge in support, Beppe Grillo's anti-austerity Five Star Movement attracted 25.54% of the vote.
Correspondents say this was an extraordinary success for the Genoese comic, whose tours around the country throughout the election campaign - hurling insults against a discredited political class - resulted in his party performing well in both chambers.

"We've started a war of generations," Mr Grillo said in an audio statement on his website which taunted the leaders of the mainstream parties. "They are all losers, they've been there for 25 to 30 years and they've led this country to catastrophe." As the extent of his success became clear on Monday night, Mr Grillo's supporters in his home town of Genoa celebrated early into Tuesday morning.

The interior ministry in Rome is where the numbers are being crunched in this election.  As the statistics poured in from constituencies down the length of Italy, journalists peered at screens that predicted possible political paralysis. The graphs showed the centre-left's votes in blue, and Silvio Berlusconi's in gold.  And you could quickly see that he had struck electoral gold in Lombardy, which boasts a huge cache of Senate seats.
With the balance of forces playing out as they are, it is hard to see a stable government emerging quickly and easily, if at all. Many analysts talk now of the possibility of fresh elections soon in a quest for a more decisive result.