Italy's Prodi Wins Lower House: Provisional Data

[spanone]

Filed at 9:29 p.m. ET

ROME (Reuters) - Center-left leader Romano Prodi's alliance has won control of Italy's lower house of parliament in general elections, provisional final official data showed on Tuesday.

Prodi's multi-party coalition won 49.8 percent of the votes for the lower house compared to 49.7 percent for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Center-right bloc, the Interior Ministry said releasing the provisional data.

Under Italy's new electoral rules, Prodi's coalition will take 340 seats in the 630-member lower house of parliament.


http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-italy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[KingFlorez]

1. One more Bush shill goes down

Thank God

[billbuckhead]

2. I wouldn't be celebrating just yet

These neocon vampires all need stakes through their hearts

[spanone]

3. Not celebrating, just reporting.

[Innoma]

5. I don't like the sound of "provisional final official data..."

Seems like that means there's still plenty of room for last minute election rigging.

When will the results be finally finalized?

[MrMonk]

4. Not quite

If Berlusconi and his affiliates take the upper house, there must be a new election, probably this fall. In the meantime, Berlusconi still rules Italy. In any event, he still controls the media.

[Igel]

6. Here's a line from the article that is intriguing.

"Under Italy's new electoral system, the ballot winners are automatically granted 340 of the lower house's 630 seats no matter how small their margin of victory in the popular vote, with the runners up getting some 277 seats."

So the winner automatically gets 54%. How'd they decide on that number, I wonder? At least it avoids a perfectly split house.

The runners up get 44%, I'm assuming that's specific to this tally.

[spag68]

7. Italy

Aren't they just great, the Italians have elections more often then we have super bowls. Remember the porno star in their senate? Anyway they still make the most beautiful cars.