That article is from the FT, on the front page of their internet edition, but I suspect it will be representative of what we should expect elsewhere:

Italy faced political paralysis on Tuesday morning after the closest election result in the nation’s modern history showed that voters were split almost exactly in half between left and right.

Well, one side won. How's that for paralysis?

Romano Prodi, the former European Commission president, and his centre-left opposition won control of parliament’s lower house by taking 341 seats against 277 seats for the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister. Another 12 seats remained to be allocated.

Uncertainty surrounded the outcome in the Senate, the upper house, which under Italy’s constitution is just as powerful as the lower house.

The centre-right had 155 seats, the centre-left 154, six seats were still to be allocated, and another seven are held by “senators for life” - distinguished public figures appointed by Italy’s head of state.

At the very least it appeared clear that Mr Prodi, if asked to form a government, would have too little control of the Senate to implement a serious economic reform programme. He would be completely dependent on his hardline communist and other radical allies for his Senate majority.

You see, the only goal of any government these days is "serious economic reform" which, as we know now, is just a code for "pay workers less, give pensioners and unemployed people smaller benefits, and make them all work harder so that companies can make better profits".

But would a narrow majority for Berlusconi lead to stories that he "has little control"? No, you'd have the breathless paragraphs about his unexpected last minute victory, crowing about his bet on the voting rules which paid off handsomely, and, of course, deeper meaning found that another major Bush ally won...

A similar problem of parliamentary arithmetic bedevilled Mr Prodi’s 1996-98 government and eventually contributed to his downfall at communist hands.

A fresh election, possibly in October, therefore looks a distinct possibility. But Mr Prodi made clear, after the lower house’s result was declared in the early hours of Tuesday, that he thought he had the right to take over as prime minister.

Another option facing Italy is to install a non-party, technocratic government with as much bipartisan support as possible. Such a government would be given the task of managing the economy and maintaining fiscal discipline before Italians went to the polls again.

Let's try to ignore the results of this election, and say that another one is inevitable. Who do these people think they are? Again, do you really think they'd call for new elections if Berlusconi had the same narrow win?

And of course, the only task of a caretaker government would be "maintaining fiscal discipline". That's not partisan or a policy choice, of course...

But the thing is - there should not be commies in government, even if they won! Again can you imagine calls for a broad coalition government if Berlusconi has won, however narrowly?

Still another complication on the horizon is that Italy must choose a new head of state to replace Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose seven-year term expires next month. The choice rests with members of parliament and representatives of Italy’s regions, and it may prove difficult to achieve a consensus between centre-right and centre-left after the acrimony of the election campaign.

First of all, however, both sides must accept the election results, and there were some signs on Tuesday that this might not be a smooth process.

Paolo Bonaiuti, Mr Berlusconi’s spokesman, suggested that the centre-right did not necessarily accept Mr Prodi’s claim of victory.

“Neither side reached 50 per cent [in the lower house] and the margin is under 25,000 votes. Such a tiny difference necessitates a scrupulous check of the count and the tally sheets,” Mr Bonaiuti said.

Mr Prodi’s margin of victory in the lower house race was a wafer-thin 49.80 to 49.73 per cent. According to official interior ministry figures, a mere 25,000 seats out of almost 40m ballots cast separated his forces from those of Mr Berlusconi.

Mr Prodi won substantially more seats in the lower house thanks to an electoral reform, introduced last year by the Berlusconi government, under which the winning coalition was guaranteed extra seats no matter how small its majority in terms of votes.

Again, it all sounds factual, but the order in which it is presented tends to validate the claims of the right that the left may not actually have won: the narrow victory margin is provided as input AFTER the claim that a recount is needed, thus giving credence to it, and the comment on the voting system goes on to make the left's victory in the chamber appear less real than it is, a result of electoral shenanigans (without any commentary that that reform was introduced by Berlusconi precisley to try to turn a narrow victory, the best they could hope, into a stable majority). But the system was put in place by Berlusconi precisley to give a clear majority. Now that it has delivered exactly what it was meant to do, it's electoral trickery?

The uncertainty helped drive Italian stocks lower on Tuesday morning with the MIB 30 down 0.8 per cent to 38,392 in early trading.

Mediaset, the Italian broadcaster owned by Mr Berlusconi, was the only gainer on the index as it appeared the tight result would leave any new coalition without the parliamentary strength to push through promised promised reforms of the media market. The shares gained 2.2 per cent to €10.28.

Yes, the verdict of the money men to finish with. Italy lost but Berlusconi still won...