ROME — He smiled down at the adoring crowd, flashing a row of teeth so white they could blind. As his fans chanted his name, waving red and green flags, Silvio Berlusconi demanded they follow him "across the river to freedom."
They sang "Forza, Italia," or "Go, Italy," the name of his party, and jeered and hissed every time he mentioned the left-leaning opposition.
"People would be masochistic not to vote for us," he said.
And so Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, wrapped up one of his final campaign rallies at the Rome fairgrounds.
But around the corner, Tiziana Lepreso was not impressed. A 39-year-old supermarket checkout clerk, Lepreso has seen her buying power plummet and her benefits slashed.
"Everyone expected so much from Berlusconi," Lepreso said. "It didn't work."
Today and Monday, Italians will vote in a national election that has Berlusconi, 69, fighting to keep his political career alive.
More than crucial domestic issues, the election is about Berlusconi, a billionaire tycoon and the longest-serving prime minister in post-World War II Italy, whose ability to run the country is increasingly being called into question.
Campaign rhetoric has been strident. Berlusconi, who is Italy's richest man, regularly boasts of his friendship with President Bush, and he is attempting to marshal the public's fears by painting the opposition as dangerous communists who would raise taxes and open the floodgates to Muslim immigrants.
His opponent, Romano Prodi, 66, a professorial economist and former president of the European Commission, portrays Berlusconi as an unmitigated disaster who has single-handedly run Italy's stagnant economy into the ground.
Berlusconi leads a coalition of centrist and right-wing parties that has governed for five years, while Prodi's disparate center-left coalition includes parties ranging from Catholics to communists.
Given Berlusconi's famous charm, endless braggadocio, wealth and control of most media -- his companies own newspapers and most of the nation's private television stations -- he ought to have the election in the bag. Instead, Prodi, a former prime minister, has been slightly ahead in polls despite a rather passionless campaign.
Berlusconi's once-endearing antics "have worn thin," said Sergio Romano, a prominent political analyst. "He will do anything to get a vote. But by now, some of his comments are such obvious exaggerations that the people are getting tired. There is real wear and tear."
