Richard Owen, Rome Correspondent of The Times, examines what comes next as Italy waits for a million expatriate votes to be counted that will decide whether Romano Prodi can form a workable government:

What happens next? When do we find out who has actually won?

We should know later today who has won because everything now hangs on the votes of Italians overseas, who have elected 12 deputies and six senators directly.

It appears that Romano Prodi has won a majority in the lower house directly - although Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-Right are demanding a recount - but even if that is confirmed, Signor Prodi still needs a majority in the Senate.

At the moment, Signor Berlusconi's coalition has one more vote than Signor Prodi in the upper house but the six Senate seats from Italian voters overseas have yet to be announced. The signs are that most of them will go to Signor Prodi and if that's true it will give the centre-left a wafer-thin majority in the upper house.

These one million voters abroad, where are they and which way do they vote?

This is the first time they've been able to take part in this way, so no one quite knows which way they'll have voted. Some on the Left thought this new system was a ploy by Signor Berlusconi to stay in power, of a piece with his restoration of proportional representation, but if that is so the calculation is that Italians overseas vote for the Right might be mistaken.

As to where they are, they're all around the globe. There are some in Britain, of course, but the majority are in the United States and South American, and there's a large community in Australia.

They can have lived abroad for a few months or for 40 years - as long as they have retained Italian nationality and are resident abroad they can vote. Their votes are being counted now, just outside Rome. In the meantime, the inquests have already begun into why the exit polls got it wrong again. The answer so far is that Italians might not always tell the truth to pollsters.

But victory is now beyond Signor Berlusconi?

It would seem so, but you never count him out, as we found out in an extraordinary night yesterday. The centre-Left was swinging from euphoria to despair after being told on the basis of early exit polls that they had won.

Now Signor Berlusconi is demanding a recount for the lower house, so I don't think he will go down without a fight. He is also claiming that if the election was a referendum on him, then he's been vindicated because it remains the largest party in Parliament with 23 per cent of the popular vote. That's true - although what he neglects to say is that the in the last election, in 2001, he won 29 per cent.

If all six overseas senators go to Signor Berlusconi, then Signor Prodi cannot govern even if he does have a majority in the lower house and President Ciampi will then consult the party leaders over whether they should form a grand coalition in the interests of national unity, whether he should appoint a caretaker government or whether Italy should go to the polls again.

But the situation is complicated by the fact that Signor Ciampi himself is due to be replaced in May. The timetable is that the new parliament assembles at the end of April; its first job will be to elect a new head of state and then that head of state will have the job of asking either Signor Prodi or Signor Berlusconi to form a government.

How do you think it will pan out?

My best guess is that what I wrote before the election holds true - that Romano Prodi will win power with a slim majority in a fragmented coalition. That remains the most likely outcome, but the question is how long his government can last given the policy differences between the Communists, Greens and Catholics in his coalition.

What is truly remarkable about all this is that so many people had written Signor Berlusconi off because of his apparent desperation - his last-minute offer of tax cuts, plus his off-colour jokes, vulgar language and his gaffes, yet despite that he very nearly pulled off a Houdini-style comeback.

Although Signor Berlusconi will claim his near-victory against the odds as a personal triumph, you must not forget that a lot of Italians on the Right voted for other parties, for the National Alliance or the Christian Democrats. It will be interesting to see whether other centre-Right leaders will challenge Signor Berlusconi's leadership if they sense that he's been weakened.

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