His centre-left bloc won the lower house vote but failed to secure a majority in the Senate.
It will be interesting to observe how the strengthened center-left bloc is going to approach coalition negotiations.
Pier Luigi Bersani's centre-left bloc won a majority in the lower house but failed to win control of the Senate.
She said that before the elections, all of the left bloc parties endorsed a document promising cohabitation rights for gay couples.
Enrico Letta, Mr Bersani's deputy, said the centre-left bloc should win the vote in the lower house and would have the responsibility for trying to form a new government.
The head of Italy's centre-left bloc has hit an impasse in his efforts to form a government and said only a mentally ill person would want to govern Italy now.
With returns from almost all districts processed, Mr Bersani's centre-left bloc had won 29.57% of the vote for the lower house (Chamber of Deputies) to 29.15% for Mr Berlusconi's bloc.
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has conceded the lower house to Pier Luigi Bersani's centre-left bloc, played down the significance of the spread, and said he was not worried about market reaction to the vote.
However, they are now joined by others who are increasingly suspicious of Mr Blair's stated intention of creating a centre-left political bloc.
ECONOMIST: The party is either being very clever, or very stupid
The Catalan Republican Left doubled its bloc, as it held just 10 seats before the election.
CNN: Ruling party in Catalonia region loses seats in parliament
Two opinion polls published on Saturday showed the anti-bailout left-wing Syriza bloc neck and neck with centre-right New Democracy, both on about 25%.
But after Sunday's elections, leaders of the other co-founders of Mercosur, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, called Mr Cartes to congratulate him and left the doors to the bloc open.
Polls suggest the combined bloc is still some way behind the centre-left coalition headed by the Democratic Party's Pier Luigi Bersani.
The centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in Europe (PASDE) is the second largest bloc with 183 MEPs, followed by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) with 84.
Dietrich Alexander in Die Welt is adamant that "European states will not accept a special role for Britain" in the bloc but is reassured by the fact that there is still a lot of time left "for Cameron to see reason".
Hopefully even the liberal bloc will see the risks of moving in this area and leave that which should be left to individual choice to legislative deliberation.
The EU, which emerged from the ashes of a world war that left Europe shattered, humiliated and sidelined, is now the world's biggest economic power, exporter, trading bloc, aid donor and foreign investor.
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