Five years ago, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi offered Italians a more U.S. style of politics, and last night this became one of the few promises he has delivered, with what looked like an Italian-style remake of the 2000 U.S. dead-heat election between Al Gore and Mr. Berlusconi's close ally George W. Bush.

Crowds of stunned Italians stood in piazzas on two sides of Rome and watched late into the night as Mr. Berlusconi -- the outrageous, conservative billionaire who was Italy's first Prime Minister in 60 years to serve a full electoral term -- stood in a dead heat against his challenger, Romano Prodi, a moderately left-wing technocrat who many had predicted would easily take this election.

Many Italian media declared Mr. Prodi's left-wing Union coalition the winner in the chamber of deputies, Italy's equivalent to the House of Commons, by a slim margin of 50 per cent to 49.6 per cent with 95 per cent of votes counted. Then, late yesterday the powerful senate was down to a margin as close as 0.1 per cent between the two coalitions, showing Mr. Berlusconi winning by 50.1 per cent to 49 per cent, with 99 per cent of votes counted.

Mr. Prodi's Union bloc won the pivotal Campania region, which includes Naples, giving it a total 155 seats in the 315-seat upper house, a one-seat margin over Mr. Berlusconi's centre-right coalition with 154.

In fact, it could be foreigners, including a large number of Canadians, who determine the outcome of this election, since Mr. Berlusconi's government gave legislative seats to "Italians abroad," ethnic Italians living in other countries, in what many observers saw as an effort to attract campaign donations from foreigners. There are 12 new deputies and six senators who are elected by voters around the world who are descended from Italians, including almost 40,000 Canadians who participated in the election.

As well as giving the franchise to foreigners, Mr. Berlusconi -- who boasted during the campaign of his facelifts, hair transplants and height-enhancing platform shoes -- performed another kind of cosmetic surgery on the Italian electoral system this year, reducing the senate to a proportional-representation voting system that makes strong majorities almost impossible and renders vote-counting extremely difficult, since results are tallied on a region-by-region basis.

If Mr. Berlusconi takes one legislature and Mr. Prodi the other, the result will almost certainly lead to another election within months. In the Italian system, both houses have equal power and one cannot veto the other, so a split government would be unable to pass most bills.

Many observers fear that this deadlock could create a long period of instability in Italy, a return to the weak governments that kept the country in turmoil until 2001.

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