Mark Kleiman allows comments !

My first "same facts" comment which comments on this post.

My second comment to this post is also repeated below. It is about how the Italiani al 'estero gave Prodi a majority in the Senate too. I meant to copy my first comment (in case it is not approved) but I copied it, then copied the link and then didn't have it to paste. Very computer illiterate of me.

What is especially wonderful is how the strange new representation of Italians abroad introduced by the center right completed the defeat of Berlusconi.

The post-neo-fascist Allianza Nazionale has been agitating for votes for Italians abroad for years (decades maybe but no one paid attention to them before Berlusconi allied with them). They seem to have assumed that emigrants (and children of emigrants) who want to vote in Italian elections will be loony nationalists.

My personal reading of the 5-1 result (which surprised analysts who expected a 3-3 split) is that anyone who gets news from any source other than Berluscavision TV knows that he is a crook and a buffoon.