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The Italian general election of 2006 and the social construction of reality

The general election of 2006 was the closest fought contest since the party-system upheavals of the early 1990s. However, what was most striking about the outcome was less the sheer narrowness of the centre left’s victory (in terms of votes in the Chamber, in terms seats in the Senate) than the way in which the result so roundly confounded expectations. Narrow victories are possibly less unusual than is realised. Nor is it unheard of that the party that loses in terms of votes nevertheless wins in terms of seats. No, what was undoubtedly more depressing for centre-left supporters as, in the afternoon and evening of 10 April, they watched the results come in was the awareness that what had initially seemed like a certain victory (with exit polls amply confirming the poll results of previous weeks) was instead an outcome that would be uncertain until almost the last of the votes had been counted. The most likely explanations for the large divergence between the poll