Few votes, but towards progressivism | Elections in Italy: the right-wing Liga backs down, the center-left advances

by time news

From rome

With an attendance of just 56.64 percent of those who have the right to vote in the 1,154 municipalities that held elections this Sunday and Monday, Italy is heading to face important changes in cities such as Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna and Naples. The first numbers have already sparked a broad debate about how the country is doing after the pandemic, from the low participation to the changes that are clear.

To have a complete panorama of the country, it will be necessary to wait not only until October 10 and 11, when the first round will be held in another 194 municipalities in regions that have special statutes such as Trentino-Alto Adige, Sardinia and Sicily, but also to wait for the second round to be held on October 17-18 in municipalities where no candidate has exceeded 50 percent of the votes.

Of the five most important cities, Naples, Bologna and Milan were “conquered” by the center-left coalition in which the Democratic Party and other smaller parties participate. Rome and Turísn, after the second round, probably too. And the party that has paid the highest price, it seems, is Matteo Salvini’s right-wing Liga, especially in northern Italy, where the original Northern League party was founded and developed. The League is part of the center-right coalition that ran in these elections alongside Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia.

In Milan, for example, when approximately 64 percent of the polling stations had been counted yesterday, the League’s votes were around 10.8, that is, more than 16 points less than in the 2019 European elections. In Turin , the League rose from 5.79 in 2016 to 10.2, far from 19.17 in 2018 policies and 26.89 in Europeans.

“Abstentionism has touched us all,” commented the top leader of the Democratic Party (center-left), Enrico Letta, who has just been elected deputy in Siena, one of the two cities that had to elect a deputy because their representatives in the Chamber were they had retired to fulfill other functions. “But it is clear that the center-right has been wrong about the candidates. You have nominated second or third level people. We have always put leaders as candidates. The candidates of the center-right have not even convinced the leaders of that coalition like Berlusconi. Having mistaken the candidates in the big cities makes the center-right unreliable ”, stressed Letta. Salvini, for his part, declared that they were paying the price of “having chosen the candidates too late.”

For the Democratic Party, the balance seems to be more than positive given that the center-left coalition of which it is part, has won three of the big cities and knowing that both in Rome and Turin, which will go to the second round, could win by allying with the M5S. The M5S leader, on his side, former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, otherwise ruled out that his party could ally itself with the center-right in the second round.

For the M5S the situation is very different, since it lost the two municipalities that they ruled with great pride, Turin and Rome, both by women. And in this sense, if something else needs to be emphasized about these elections, it is that in the big cities there were no female candidates for the main roles, only men.

What happens in each city

Naples (Italy’s southern center) seems to be until now, when 594 of the 884 polling stations have been scrutinized, the municipality that has most clearly wanted to entrust the solution of all its problems to the center-left given that its candidate, Gaetano Manfredi (in the photo) , had 63.2 percent of the votes. The center-right candidate Catello Maresca got only 22. In the center-right alliance that supports Maresca, moreover, the League of Salvini does not even appear. Only Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, a woman increasingly emerging as a possible future leader of the center-right coalition.

Bologna (northeast of Rome), a traditional center-left city, when 415 of the 445 polling stations had been counted, it was confirmed that the center-left candidate, Matteo Lepore, had been elected as mayor, who obtained 62% of the votes against 29 , 5% of the candidate of the center-right Fabio Battistini.

Milan (Northwest Italy), curiously, a city where the economy and finances have a lot of weight, re-elected its current mayor, Beppe Sala, also supported by the center-left alliance. Sala obtained 57.6% of the votes when 1,011 of the 1,248 polling stations had been counted. The candidate of the center-right, Luca Bernardo, got 32.2%.

On Turin (North), which from the beginning the polls presented as a very uncertain city in electoral matters, when 751 of the 919 electoral positions had been counted, the center-left candidate Stefano Lo Russo had obtained 43.7% of the votes. If it does not exceed 50%, it will have to compete in the second round with the candidate of the center-right Paolo Damilano who obtained 38.8%.

Finally in Roma, the vote count was one of the slowest in the entire country. After 11pm Italian time, 1,367 of the 2,603 ​​polling stations had been counted. Until that moment, the center-right candidate Enrico Michetti seemed to win (30.7% of the votes) but without exceeding 50% of the votes, for which the Italian capital should go to a second round in which surely Michetti and Roberto Gualtieri will face off, a candidate from the center-left who now got 26.8% of the vote.

Exit Mouth Surveys

As soon as the polls closed, on Monday at 15:00 Italian time, the exit polls were broadcast, that is, the result of the exit polls that presented an overview of what would later be confirmed with official data.

With these polls, it became quite clear that the mayoral candidates of the center-left would win in three of the five big cities that went to municipal elections this Sunday and Monday: Milan, Naples and Bologna. And in the three without having to go to a second round. For Milan, the center-left candidate Beppe Sala (mayor of Milan so far) was expected to obtain around 58.2% of the votes according to a projection made by SWG-La7. Gaetano Manfredi, center-left and M5S candidate in Naples, according to another Opinio RAI poll, was expected to get 62.4% of the vote. In Bologna, the candidate of the center-left, Matteo Lepore, was due to obtain just over 58% of the votes according to the SWG-La7 projection.

Turin and Rome, as mentioned before the elections, were presented according to the exit polls, as the cities that will almost certainly have to go to a second round. In Rome, neither the candidate of the center-left Roberto Gualtieri, nor that of the center-right Enrico Michetti nor that of the Five Star Movement (M5S), the current mayor Virginia Raggi, nor others, would obtain more than 50% of the votes. In fact, according to these forecasts, the center-right candidate, Michetti, would get more votes than Gualtieri, which was later shown to be the opposite. But the difference could be made by the second round when Gualtieri could ally, as some analysts anticipate, with the M5S and with the list of Carlo Calenda, a former member of the Democratic Party (center-left) to which Gualtieri belongs.

For Turin, the forecasts were very uncertain and disparate between the different surveys. But the low turnout of Italians at the polls was underlined. Voting in Italy is not compulsory but in general Italians have always participated in the electoral process. Turin achieved the worst percentage in its history this year. The presence of voters was around 48%, when in the 2016 elections it exceeded 57% and 10 years ago it was around 65%.

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment