Italian Elections: Still too close to call.

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With respect to the Italian elections, there’s still only one thing certain – it’s going to be a long night, and, possibly, not the last one. There have apparently been, if my rudimentary understanding of Italian news broadcaster Rai News 24 is correct, unjustified delays in data processing. Thus, given the closeness of the race between the center-left and center-right coalitions, Italian expatriats may be the ones who cast the decisive votes for both lower and upper chambers of the Italian Parliament, since a law, introduced in 2001 formed four “overseas constituencies.” They will, accordingly, choose 12 of the 630 MPS in the lower, and six of the the 315 senators in the upper house.

So, instead of news, just some more context. At wwitv.com you can find a whole page full of web streams provided by Italian tv stations. Electionresources.com features a long explanation of the Italian electoral systems, both old and new. As the author, Manuel Álvarez-Rivera explains, the system has been altered in numerous ways for this election –

It is widely anticipated that in the event of an Unione victory under the new PR systems, the resulting center-left majorities in both houses of Parliament would be considerably smaller than under the previous systems, and the leader of the Unione, former Prime Minister (and former President of the European Commission) Romano Prodi has promised to undo the changes if the center-left returns to power in this year’s elections.

Finally, here’s the google-translated election website provided by Italy’s interior ministery, which, hopefully, is, where you can find the eventual election results as soon as they are released officially.

Italian Elections: Still too close to call.

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UPDATE below the fold.

With respect to the Italian elections, there’s still only one thing certain – it’s going to be a long night, and, possibly, not the last one. There have apparently been, if my rudimentary understanding of Italian news broadcaster Rai News 24 is correct, unjustified delays in data processing. Thus, given the closeness of the race between the center-left and center-right coalitions, Italian expatriats may be the ones who cast the decisive votes for both lower and upper chambers of the Italian Parliament, since a law, introduced in 2001 formed four “overseas constituencies.” They will, accordingly, choose 12 of the 630 MPS in the lower, and six of the the 315 senators in the upper house.

So, instead of news, just some more context. At wwitv.com you can find a whole page full of web streams provided by Italian tv stations. Electionresources.com features a long explanation of the Italian electoral systems, both old and new. As the author, Manuel Álvarez-Rivera explains, the system has been altered in numerous ways for this election –

It is widely anticipated that in the event of an Unione victory under the new PR systems, the resulting center-left majorities in both houses of Parliament would be considerably smaller than under the previous systems, and the leader of the Unione, former Prime Minister (and former President of the European Commission) Romano Prodi has promised to undo the changes if the center-left returns to power in this year’s elections.

Finally, here’s the google-translated election website provided by Italy’s interior ministery, which, hopefully, is, where you can find the eventual election results as soon as they are released officially.
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The Market Speaks…and Jörg Packs

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Well, by 1630 CET today, the Milan stock market had made a very clear judgment on the outcome of the Italian elections – the MIBTEL index being up just under 1 per cent intraday, despite a pasting for Berlusconi’s own Mediaset..down 1.98 per cent at €9.68 a share. Berlusconi’s departure seems welcome indeed.

More exit poll results are spilling out all the time, showing the Left with a working majority in both houses. So far, the only weirdness has been the rather idiosyncratic kerfuffle in the town of Amelia (German link), where a protest led to the removal of crosses from all polling stations on the grounds of constitutionally guaranteed secularism, and predictable moaning from the ex/post/neo/whatever-fascists. A small outbreak of laicisme.

Oh yes, and this…sorry, more German linkage. Seems Jörg Haider, fun-lovin’ pseudofascist scandal monkey and governor of the Austrian province of Kärnten, is going to stand for election in 2009…in Italy, as a candidate for a party advocating Venetian independence. Not just Northern independence as per routine Liga Nord stupidity, but independence for the Most Serene Republic herself.

Strange really. I’ve always thought of Haider as a man out of place, a Mediterranean politician stuck on the wrong side of the Alps with the Germans. His demagoguery, rocambolesque coalition whoring and-to be brutally frank-corruption and barely concealed racism would have fitted beautifully into Silvio Berlusconi’s recent campaign, the municipal authorities of Marbella, or perhaps the intrigues of southern French Gaullism. Carinthia produced far more than its fair share of Nazis, as did many similarly debatable provinces on the edges of the German linguistic sphere, and in a sense his pumped-up nationalism fits the pattern.

Until you remember that he’s not actually from there at all (not far from Linz, actually), and in fact is putting on the overcompensated border nationalism to ingratiate himself with the overcompensated border nationalists. Which fits, too.

But it’s going to be fun to watch.

Italian Elections

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Well it’s not official yet, but the first exit poll has Berlusconi trailing:

An exit poll Monday showed conservative Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi trailing center-left challenger Romano Prodi in parliamentary elections. The Nexus poll indicated that Prodi’s coalition received between 50 and 54 percent of the vote in both the upper and lower chambers of parliament, while Berlusconi’s coalition received 45-49 percent.

Obviously this is the ‘early days’ stage, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I will be updating as the day (or night) wears on.

Update I: It’s looking firmer for Prodi. More exit polls are coming up with similar results. For example the Piepoli Institute’s exit polls for Sky TG24 have given the Prodi coalition 52 percent to 47 percent for Berlusconi’s centre-right and for both houses.

Update II. Tobias has now posted more extensively. First thing Tuesday morning the outcome is still in doubt, and those who were sceptical about the early exit polls were right to be so. Prodi is now claiming victory, but this is being challenged vigorously by the Berlusconi camp. The margin is wafer thin for the lower house (the Chamber of Deputies, or ‘Camera’), with Prodi’s having 49.80 per cent of the vote as compared to 49.73 per cent for Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms (a difference of a mere 25,000 votes). Naturally calls for a recount abound. The position of the Senate is still in doubt. There is currently a one seat difference between the camps (in favour of Berlusconi) but six more seats based on overseas votes are still to be allocated.

Wikipedia have a substantial entry on the elections themselves, and another on the Italian parliament, which may prove useful in understanding things if the final out come is ultimately a ‘hung’ parliament.

Migration And Reform

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Well today is obviously immigration day, as thousands of Latinos take to the streets in the United States to demand some kind of ‘regularisation’. I have been posting on Demography Matters about the changing pattern of Latino migration in the US, and on the not entirely unrelated topic of whether it is the arrival of the Latinos or the presence of religious belief which is primarily responsible for the fact that US fertility is still hovering round the replacement mark (especially the comments, and here, and here and here).

But this post is not about migration in the United States. Rather it is about migration inside the frontiers of the EU itself. As populations age, and our economies come under increasing strain, some societies will prove more able to reform than others. Now one conjecture I have been making is that in this process some societies will attract population (and get that famous win-win dynamic going) while others will lose even that which they have (sounds a bit like the biblical parable now doesn’t it). Actually economists have terms for all this. You might say that the ones who attract are experiencing an increasing returns process, while those who lose are suffering from negative feedback.

Claus has already touched on how Denmark is suffering from a lack of immigration (and me here), in the sense that more people are now leaving than are arriving, but perhaps more importantly for the future of the entire EU, Germany is very near to becoming a net exporter of people (and here).

Pperhaps a bit more spice was added to this already simmering cooking-pot last week by a sudden, and rather unexpected, bout of finger pointing from Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, in the general direction of Vienna. Now according to Steinbrück, Vienna’s recent decision to cut corporate tax rates from 34 per cent to 25 per cent has led to an increasing number of German companies investing across the border in Austria. In other words, not only are people leaving, companies are now also leaving, and to less than anticipated destinations, and of course, on the backs of the companies will go even more people. Are we really so sure that that recently heralded sustainable recovery is as sustainable as some are suggesting? Morgan Stanley’s Eric Chaney understandably still has his doubts.

The real issue is this: as the FT says “Mr Steinbrück has limited room for manoeuvre in the tax field because of Germany’s high budget deficit”. All these issues interlock. So, on a day when Jaques Chirac seems to have taken a step backwards in the French reform process, it might be just worth asking ourselves whether, at the end of the day, there won’t be a price to pay for all this ‘no rush now is there’ style delay.

Who is my neighbour?

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Who was the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany? Diagramme his family tree (paternal and maternal) back to the 14th century.

Germans have been shocked lately to discover that a lot of their schools suck.

The schools in question are typically Hauptschulen, the lowest in the tripartite German division of secondary schools (the others are the Realschulen and the Gymnasien.) Traditionally, the Hauptschule was designed to ensure a basic education while providing vocational training and facilitating its pupils’ entry into an apprenticeship. Not all that long ago, people in other countries looked upon Germany’s programme of vocational education with considerable envy.

Things fall apart, alas, and the centre cannot hold. These days many German firms can select their apprentices from out of the ‘higher-class’ Realschulen, and many inner-city Hauptschulen have become mere dumping-grounds. Worse, they are all (or are all perceived at this moment by the populace to be) festering hotbeds of nigh-American levels of intra-schoolchild violence, though there might be rather fewer firearms in the schoolrooms.

But what has really grabbed the Germans by the collar about this issue is that it is not really about schools. Rather, it is about the very serious question of what it means to be a German. Or, as all too many Germans see it, it is about the strangers among us.

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One-liner of the week

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The Mirror, on the latest bizarre twist of the Italian election campaign :

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday confessed to calling sex chat lines – to ask women what they thought of his policies. (…)

He called the girls to ask what they thought of him and Mr Prodi.

He told party workers at a briefing: “Seven out of the nine young ladies I called said they preferred me, which is very good news indeed.”

One aide said: “He was delighted that the women were in favour of him. It certainly perked him up.”

But a member of Mr Prodi’s camp said: “These women say anything to please the desperate men who call them.”

(via Yglesias)

Premature Evaluation, pt 3 (The Fatal Shore)

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What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it?

Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, was published 20 years ago; this is not breaking news. So out with the convention, in with the thoughts.
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Orange Refill

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Viktor and Yulia, together again.

April 6 (Bloomberg) — Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party will team up in parliament with an alliance led by former premier Yulia Timoshenko and the Socialists, said Our Ukraine spokesman Valentyn Mondrievsky.

The Regions Party, led by Viktor Yanukovych, which won the most votes in March 26 elections, will remain in opposition, Mondrievsky said in a telephone interview today in Kiev. Our Ukraine party was third in the elections, behind Timoshenko’s bloc and the Regions Party.

Timoshenko had been demanding reinstatement as Prime Minister. It’s not yet clear whether that demand has been met.