Exit polls yesterday said Italian voters have ousted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after an acrimonious election campaign, ending his flamboyant five-year reign and handing victory to a center-left coalition led by Romano Prodi.
"We're still very cautious, but if these indications are confirmed that would mean that Italy had decided to turn the page and begin a new era," said a spokesman at Prodi's campaign headquarters.
A Nexus poll for state broadcaster RAI gave Prodi's multi-party coalition -- which includes Communists as well as Catholics and liberals -- a majority in both houses of parliament.
It showed the center-left bloc had between 50 percent and 54 percent of the vote for both the lower Chamber of Deputies and upper house Senate against 45 percent to 49 percent to Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition.
The exit polls were released within minutes of the close of voting at 3pm after a two-day general election.
Senator Paolo Guzzanti of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party said: "Our coalition has lost the elections. We expected something like this because we've lost every [local] election since 2001."
Berlusconi made no immediate comment, although the exit polls forecast a collapse of the Forza Italia vote, giving it between 20 percent and 23 percent of the poll, as against the 29.4 percent it took when Berlusconi swept to power.
"The exit polls are unfavorable, but we are remaining very cautious," Forza Italia campaign analyst Denis Verdini said. "What's interesting for us is that the turnout figure is above 83 percent, which is very good for us. One vote could make all the difference in the Chamber of Deputies."
Prodi -- a 66-year-old economist who unseated Berlusconi in 1996 -- earlier said he was "confident, very confident," of maintaining his hex on the media magnate.
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