Italy Moves Toward 2-Party System : Europe: Left’s surprise strength in regional vote sets stage for clear choice in national election.

Italians on Tuesday observed a historic landmark in the making of their tumultuous young democracy--and a surprising electoral stalemate along its rocky path toward change.

Ceremonies in major cities paid 50th anniversary homage to patriots who died to free their country of fascist dictatorship and Nazi occupation at the end of World War II.

When the war ended, Italy was a bombed-out, bankrupt, dispirited monarchy. In the half century since, it has become a first-rank European democracy: a rich, flourishing republic whose politics, however, have been highlighted by intrigue, corruption and fragmentation.

But final returns Tuesday from weather-vane regional elections showed a country almost evenly divided right and left in an emerging, if unruly, trend toward a two-party system.

The result sets the stage for national elections, probably this fall, that should offer voters their most clearly defined choice of leaders since the war.

Italy went to bed Sunday night assured by pollsters that the center-right had won narrowly in voting for new governments in 15 regions, 76 provinces and more than 5,000 municipalities. Favored center-right parties advertised free-market capitalism, while underdog center-leftists preached liberal social democracy.

On Monday, Silvio Berlusconi, the center-right leader and former prime minister, claimed victory and reiterated his call for immediate national elections to replace the technocrat government of Prime Minister Lamberto Dini. By Tuesday, final official returns instead gave victory to an alliance of center-left parties built around the former Italian Communist Party.

Outraged arias echoed across the political stage. “Italians victimized by colossal disinformation,” one newspaper snarled.

One errant pollster appeared on a television news show with a toy pistol pointed to his head: “Exit polls are like Russian roulette,” he sighed.

A combination of proportional and winner-take-all systems slowed the official count of paper ballots so complex that 10% were invalidated for being incorrectly marked.

In the end, though, parties representing the center-left and center-right each officially got around 41% of the vote. But the center-left won nine of 15 regions.

The Democratic Party of the Left, which as the Italian Communist Party ran second in every postwar national election, finished first this time with 24.6%. An unabashedly Marxist splinter party called Refounded Communism showed a strong 8.4%.

Forza Italia (Go, Italy), the creation of media tycoon Berlusconi when he entered politics last year, managed second with 22.4%. At 14.1% came the right-wing National Alliance, a party built around the neo-fascist heirs of dictator Benito Mussolini--killed by partisans 50 years ago this week.

“The results are striking confirmation that the chances of victory by the center-left (in national elections) are so real as to be true,” said Romano Prodi, a former industrialist and economics professor who hopes to be the center-left candidate for prime minister.

Berlusconi would be his opponent. Forced by defection of an allied party to resign in December after seven unsettled months, Berlusconi has been pushing for early elections ever since.

So too has his ally Gianfranco Fini, leader of the National Alliance, who told reporters that Sunday’s vote “increases political instability and makes it even more urgent that there be elections for a new Parliament.”

The left wants Dini to complete a program of reforms before new elections are called. Dini says he will soon propose legislation to overhaul Italy’s wasteful, unwieldy pension system.

Dini says his government will step down when reforms are complete. But with a national referendum scheduled for June and surprisingly victorious center-leftists favoring national elections later rather than sooner, analysts say the vote is unlikely before October.