There will be no “bunga bunga” parties in Silvio Berlusconi’s basement pad this week.  The Italian prime minister has nothing to celebrate after this week’s local elections delivered a devastating blow to his leadership — particularly in his traditional stronghold and home town, Milan, where incumbent mayor and Berlusconi ally Letizia Moratti was forced into a run-off for the first time in 14 years.

“This is a very bad result, the worst result since 1994,” said Franco Pavoncello, professor of political science at John Cabot University in Rome. “It is like Bill Clinton losing in Arkansas.”

Berlusconi campaigned intensely in these elections, widely seen as a poll on his popularity and the first real test of the s-x scandal and ongoing fraud and corruption trials in which he is immersed in the Milan courts.

The prime minister even put himself on the ticket and stood as a candidate for the council hoping to win more personal preferences than the 52,000 and boost the centre-right’s chance of victory.

Under Italy’s ballot system, if no candidate wins an outright majority the vote goes to a second round. But as the votes were counted, it was clear that the outgoing mayor, had not only failed to win a clear majority she had lost by a wide margin.

The centre-left’s Giuliano Pisapia won 48.04% of the vote to Moratti’s disappointing 41.58%. As for preference votes, Berlusconi took just over half of what he won in 2006 — that too was a shock.

Now Moratti will face Pisapia in a second round at the end of May that will have major repercussions at the national level as the prime minister’s coalition partner, the anti-immigrant Northern League, seems to be increasingly disillusioned with Berlusconi and looking to distance itself from the election results.

“The Northern League is starting to question whether they should stay with him,” said Pavoncello.  “If they lose Milan in the second round, the government won’t last.”

The Italian media was also shocked at the results with Italy’s centre-right Il Messaggero newsaper  calling them as a “turning point”  while the left-leaning La Repubblica said voters had decided “to turn the page”.

Berlusconi’s popularity has fallen to the lowest level since his re-election in 2008 amid claims that he paid a teenage Moroccan runaway for s-x and court appearances to fight charges of bribery, fraud and tax evasion in three other trials related to Mediaset broadcast empire.

The vote also took place as Italy’s national statistics office revealed the economy expanded just 0.1% in the first quarter, one of the slowest rates in the eurozone.

No one is certain whether any or all of these factors influenced the vote or whether voters want to bring an end to Berlusconi’s rule, which many perceive has gone on too long.

While Denis Verdini, a Berlusconi ally and co-ordinator of his People of Freedom Party, assured the media there was no threat to his leadership,  Berlusconi said he was “saddened and surprised” at the result . But there is no hiding the alarm in the corridors of power.

The government lost a vote in the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday and Berlusconi is reportedly awaiting the results of the next popularity poll before he decides to hit the campaign trail or not.

If a growing number of Italians want “to turn the page” and get rid of Berlusconi, there is little consolation for the main opposition centre left Democratic Party in these election results.

While its candidates won the northern cities of Turin and Bologna, the failure by national and local governments from both parties to resolve the ongoing rubbish dispute left voters divided in Naples.

“The only conclusion is that Italians are more and more fed up with politics,” said Professor James Walston from American University in Rome.  “Many voted for protest parties but not in dramatic numbers.”

One Italian told me the biggest loser in this election was the country itself since candidates across the political spectrum had failed to offer voters the kind of vision that the country needed to kick-start its future.