What If Nobody Wins the Italian Elections?
Mario Monti, Italy's outgoing Prime Minister and leader of a centrist coalition for early elections in February.
The question is clear, and has evidently crossed the minds of some of the country's political leaders.
One view is that some kind of coalition government will be cobbled together but it won't last long.
"I have the impression that the next legislature won't last very long," Pier Ferdinando Casini, head of the centrist UDC party, said recently.
Mr. Casini is the chief political ally of the outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, a technocrat who has decided to seek power again but with an electoral mandate. The new centrist grouping is polling around 15%, making it a potential spoiler for the center-left coalition expected to win by far the most votes but perhaps not a majority of seats in both chambers.