Berlusconi is Going Down - Maybe....

UPDATE No. 3 - 4-12-2006
Yep, Florida it is. Belusconi basically wants a recount. Prodi won the vote by a slight margin. President Ciampi, who's term is about to expire will be leaving it to his successor to name a Prime Minister. It'll probably be well into May before this is all settled.
ABCNews - Reuters

UPDATE No. 2:
Florida 2000 revisited in Italy!! Romano Prodi is declaring victory, but Berlusconi wants to count the ballots! The Center-Left Coalition has a slightly marginal majority in the Senate, and if they came out ahead in the Lower House, they'll control 340 of the 630 seats.
Read all about it from the AP on ABCNews.com

UPDATE:
Exit polls have Berlusconi ahead in the Senate, but neck and neck with Prodi's party in the Chamber of Deputies... this one's going to be tight folks....

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2 exit polls have Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi trailing behind Romano Prodi, who heads a center-left coalition of political parties. (ABCNews: AP Wire)

I may be smelling something in the air, that right-wing politics in Europe - and perhaps in the West as a whole (we may hope) - are on the decline, and we can have a little more sanity in governance again.

For more background information on this election, Wikipedia is beyond compare.

Anyway, for Italians Silvio Berlusconi is like George Bush, Rupert Murdoch and Kinky Friendman all rolled into one.

Italy has been a member of Bush's "Coalition of the Willing in Iraq". Berlusconi, after mounting pressure had promised to pull the italian troops out of Iraq in 2005, but George W. talked him out of that. He's again promised to do so this year, but I'm sure that with Romano Prodi in charge this is a certainty.