Italy's Election Results

Italy’s Election Results

It’s worth having a look at the scale of Berlusconi’s success, if only because it doesn’t seem to be understood by much of the foreign media. He said yesterday that Italy could function like a proper Western democracy, with one large party in government and one large party in opposition. Let’s see.

At the last election, in the House of Deputies 37 parties stood, and 13 achieved some representation. This time 30 stood and 7 are represented. The extreme right and the extreme left have been obliterated, the communists without a seat for the first time since the war.

Berlusconi’s dominance is clear. Whilst Michael Moore writes in today’s Telegraph ‘Silvio Berlusconi knows he cannot govern without Bossi's support’ the picture is much more in the PM’s favour. In the House, Berlusconi’s PdL and the tiny MpA have 280 seats. He will not need Bossi’s Lega Nord’s 60 seats to beat the others: the PD, IdV and others can total only 277. In the Senate the story is the same. Berlusconi without Bossi can muster 143 seats whereas the others between them make 133.

Only Bossi voting with the left is going to upset Berlusconi. But he won’t do that. Silvio is safely in.