So, it looks like Bersani has won the first battle in the race for leadership of the PD. The party has released the rough regional vote totals.

If the race between Bersani and Franceschini is a battle between the former Democratici di Sinistra and the Margherita (DL) respectively, then we should expect Bersani to do well in regions where the DS won a greater share of the combined vote of the two parties. Conversely, we would expect Franceschini to do well in regions where the Margherita did well relative to the DS.

It’s not that easy. The graph shows Bersani’s share of the two candidate vote against the DL share of the DL+DS vote in the Senate elections of 2006, the last elections for which we have separate vote totals for the DS and DL. If the DS-vs-DL story were true, we’d expect to see a downward sloping line.

Instead, we’ve got Bersani doing better than our (naive) expectations in Emilia Romagna and in Calabria, and poorer than expected in Lazio and Marche.

It’s not surprising that Bersani should do well in his home region (Emilia Romagna) — but then that’s Franceschini’s home region as well. I have no idea why he did so well in Calabria. One representative of Marino has denounced irregularities in the vote there [and here].

As for Lazio — well, Bersani did well in Rome, but Franceschini’s doing well in all those circoli outside the capital which add up, and his man Morassut went one better, winning more votes than the candidate for regional secretary affiliated to the Bersani motion, Alessandro Mazzoli.