In accordance with the Italian Constitution, the election was held in the form of a secret ballot, with the Senators, the Deputies and 58 regional representatives entitled to vote.

Inside the centre-right, the Christian Democracy for Autonomies and the New Italian Socialist Party voted for the journalist Giuliano Ferrara.

However, the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats declared its members could vote for Napolitano in the next ballot, an opinion that was not shared within the coalition.

Due to the lack of consensus and the row in the opposition, the Union members decided to continue withholding their votes for Napolitano.

The House of Freedoms declared that its members would cast a blank vote; however, the decision was not taken unanimously, as the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats clearly showed its approval of Napolitano's candidacy.

Surprisingly, given the enormous heat and animosity shown in the preceding general elections, the two coalition leaders organized a meeting to try to come up with a candidate that was acceptable to both.

Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition, was the most vocal opponent of any candidate that came from the former Italian Communist Party, in line with the anti-communist stance he had taken in the campaign.

Yet, when Napolitano was elected, Silvio Berlusconi gave an interview to one of his political magazines Panorama saying that the UDC betrayed him by letting 60 of his electors cast a blank vote on the first ballot, instead of supporting the official candidate Gianni Letta.

When the UDC argued that this might have spelled the end of the Coalition, Silvio Berlusconi quickly changed his stance by saying, as he often had, that he had been "misunderstood" and that he never gave that journalist an interview.

Some moderate journalists liked D'Alema because his presidency would have given Romano Prodi a stabler government, since the biggest party of the Union had not been rewarded with any institutional position.

However, the official stance of the centre-right was that D'Alema, being an important left-wing politician and having participated in the election campaign, was ill-suited for president, a role that it is supposed to be impartial.