‘The Italian Parliamentary Elections of April 2006’

On the 9 and 10 April 2006 Italians went to the polls to elect a new bicameral Parliament1, i.e. Camera dei Deputati (Lower House) and Senato (Senate or Upper House). winning As in 2001 the governing coalition lost the election and the government was thrown out of office. However, despite the extremely poor record of the incumbent government, the race was unexpectedly close and the electoral results were rather ambiguous, with the Centre-Left coalition the plurality of votes in the Lower House (49.8%) and the Centre-Right winning the plurality of votes in the Senate (49.9%). The ‘original’ electoral system, invented by the Centre-Right only few months before the election, translated these results into a sufficiently clear victory for the Centre-Left which obtained a majority of 67 in the Lower House and a majority of 2 in the Senate. The Unione’s majority in the Senate was likely to be enhanced by the presence of 7 honorary senators likely to support the new majority. [Taken from introduction]