Berlusconi projected to win Italian elections

A victory for Berlusconi would return the media tycoon to the prime minister's office for the third time since 1994
©AFP - Filippo Monteforte

ROME - Self-made billionaire Silvio Berlusconi looked set to win a third term as Italian prime minister Monday, with early projections giving him a wide margin of victory in the all-important Senate.

Berlusconi's centre-right coalition has a lead of between 4.6 and 9.1 percentage points in the Senate, according to projections based on about one-third of statistical samplings of the vote.

A victory for Berlusconi, 71, would return the media tycoon to the prime minister's office for the third time since 1994, the year after he burst onto the political stage by creating the Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party.

The projections, which have a margin of error of three percentage points, gave Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL), in coalition with the populist Northern League, between 43.7 and 47.2 percent of votes for the Senate.

The centre-left coalition of former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni was projected to win between 38.1 and 39.1 percent.

Victory in the Senate is essential to Italy's governability, and since seats are allotted on a regional basis the makeup of the upper house does not always reflect the national vote.

Silvio Berlusconi has been implicated in a string of corruption probes
©AFP - Giuseppe Cacace

The upper house was the scene of outgoing centre-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi's downfall in January, when a small party with just three senators withdrew its support.

In the lower house Chamber of Deputies -- where the winning coalition is automatically awarded 340 seats of a total 630 -- exit polls gave Berlusconi's forces an advantage of at least two percent.

If returned to power, Berlusconi faces an economic downturn and a nation frustrated over political gridlock blamed on the electoral law that he himself crafted when coming to the end of his second premiership in 2005.

The election campaign saw the candidates trying to overcome widespread voter disillusionment with politics and a stagnant economy.

The vote was to decide who would lead the country's 63rd government in 63 years
©AFP - Tiziana Fabi

One would-be voter on Sunday channeled his frustration by tearing up and eating his ballot before being led away from a polling station in the southern town of Sorrento by police.

"What future are we preparing for our children? Who should I have voted for? Something has to change," said 41-year-old Ciro D'Esposito.

Berlusconi, who goes by the nickname Il Cavaliere (the knight), had enjoyed a double-digit lead over the younger Veltroni, 52, when campaigning began in February.

Voter surveys in the run-up to the polls saw the former mayor gradually eat away at that lead, which stood at between six and seven percent when the last polls were permitted two weeks ago.

Veltroni apparently closed the gap even further as he criss-crossed the country aboard a bus emulating US Republican candidate John McCain's Straight Talk Express.

Romano Prodi casts his ballot
©AFP - Vincenzo Pinto

In campaigning, Veltroni had urged voters to "turn the page" on the older generation represented by Berlusconi, who for his part cast his rival as a communist relic.

Berlusconi, notorious for gaffes and derided for efforts to hide his age and receding hairline, has been implicated in a string of corruption probes and ran up a budget deficit equal to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) during his last premiership.

Hoping to avoid the divisions of Prodi's centre-left coalition that narrowly won in 2006, Veltroni spurned the far left and the centre when he set up his Democratic Party last year.

Veltroni can at least draw solace from the fact that his party, according to the initial projections, will be Italy's largest single party with the support of about one in three voters.