Italy: Despite losing the symbolic seat of Rome, the centre-right government forces of the Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, appeared to limit the damages in last weekend's nationwide local elections.
More than 11 million Italians were eligible to vote in the first round of municipal, provincial and regional elections which had been seen as the first major test of Mr Berlusconi's popularity since his election to government office in April 2001.
It had been speculated that the Prime Minister might pay a heavy price both for his much-publicised ongoing judicial problems and for having backed the US-led war in Iraq.
Surveys have consistently shown that public opinion does not support Mr Berlusconi's head-on attacks on the judiciary while opinion polls during the Iraq war showed a huge majority opposed to the US-led military intervention.
Yet, with the final count still going on in some contests late last night, it would seem that the centre-right had registered only a relative limited defeat.
In a vote marked by a high turnout (63.1 per cent provincial, 75.4 per cent municipal), the opposition pulled off easily the biggest win of all when centre-left candidate Mr Enrico Gasbarra beat the incumbent Silvano Moffa in the province of Rome, winning the contest by almost 10 per cent. That win was all the more significant for the fact that Mr Berlusconi had thrown his weight into the Rome contest with a series of prominent posters all over the capital calling on the electorate to "defend freedom" by voting "against the communists".
The centre-left won five of the 12 provincial contests, picking up the seats of Rome, Benevento, Enna, Foggia and Massa Carrara. The centre-right won the four Sicilian contests of Agrigento, Catania, Messina and the island capital, Palermo. Three other contests, in Caltanisetta, Siracuse and Trapani, will go to a second vote in a fortnight.
As for the city council vote in nine major regional centres, the centre-left won control of Pisa and Massa, the centre-right picked up the Sicilian city of Messina, with the six other contests in Brescia, Pescara, Ragusa, Sondrio, Treviso and Vicenza all going to the second round.
A polemical electoral campaign ended as it had begun with the Democratic Left leader, Mr Piero Fassino, pointing an angry accusatory finger at state-run TV broadcaster RAI, accusing it of failing to report the centre-left's victory fully.
Via his Mediaset commercial network and through his political control of RAI, Mr Berlusconi theoretically controls almost 90 per cent of terrestrial television in Italy.