Victory to Prodi

Well, it looks like the Italian election results will be settled sooner than expected. From the BBC: "[Opposition leader] Romano Prodi looks set to be confirmed as the winner of Italy's general election after the number of contested ballots was drastically lowered." Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claims that he will continue to "resist" and that Italy is "at a standstill," but "even if all the contested ballots [and there aren't nearly as many as initially reported] went to Mr Berlusconi the final result would not change".

Prodi's center-left coalition, The Union, will have a majority over Berlusconi's center-right coalition, House of Freedoms, in both the Chamber of Deputies (348-281, with one independent) and the Senate (158-156, with one independent).

Good news, yet I wonder if we've heard the last of Berlusconi. He may yet fight these results with all the firepower he can muster. And when you run the media, there's an awful lot of firepower to be had.

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Here's Italy's red-blue divide (the green independent area in the north-west is quasi-autonomous Valle d'Aosta):