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

From Rome

With a turnout of just 56.64% of those eligible to vote in the 1,154 municipalities that had elections this Sunday and Monday, Italy will face significant changes in cities like Milan, Rome , Turin, Bologna and Naples. The first figures have already sparked a wide debate on the country’s situation after the pandemic, from low participation to clear changes.

To have a complete panorama of the country, it will be necessary to wait not only on October 10 and 11, date on which the first round will take place in 194 other municipalities in regions endowed with particular statutes such as Trentino Alto Adige, Sardinia and Sicily. , but also to wait for the second round which will be held on October 17 and 18 in municipalities where no candidate has exceeded 50 percent of the vote.

Of the five largest cities, Naples, Bologna and Milan have been “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 Forza Italia by Silvio Berlusconi and Fratelli d’Italia by Giorgia Meloni.

In Milan, for example, when around 64% of polling stations were counted yesterday, the League’s votes were around 10.8, more than 16 points lower than in the European elections of 2019. A Turin, the League went from 5.79 in 2016 to 10.2, far from 19.17 in 2018 politicians and 26.89 among Europeans.

“Abstention 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 which had to elect a deputy because than their representatives in the House where they had retired to perform other functions. “But it is clear that the center-right was wrong about the candidates. You have appointed second or third level people. We have always put leaders as candidates. The center-right candidates have not even convinced leaders of this coalition like Berlusconi. Getting the wrong candidates in big cities makes the center-right unreliable, ”Letta said. Salvini, for his part, said they were paying the price “for choosing the candidates too late”.

For the Democratic Party, the results seem 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 leader of the M5S, for his part, the former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, has also ruled out that his party can ally with the center-right in the second round.

For the M5S, the situation is very different, since it has lost the two municipalities it proudly ruled, Turin and Rome, both to women. And in this sense, if there is something else to underline about these elections, it is that in the big cities there were no candidates for the main roles, only men.

What is happening in each city

Naples (Central-South Italy) seems to be so far, when 594 of the 884 polling stations have been scrutinized, the municipality which most clearly wanted to entrust the solution of all its problems to the center-left given that its candidate, Gaetano Manfredi (pictured), had 63.2 percent of the vote. Center-right candidate Catello Maresca only got 22. In the center-right alliance that supports Maresca, moreover, Salvini’s League does not even appear. Only Forza Italia by Berlusconi and Fratelli d’Italia by Georgia Meloni, a woman who is increasingly emerging as a possible future leader of the center-right coalition.

Bologna (northeast of Rome), a traditional center-left city, when 415 of 445 polling stations had been counted, it was confirmed that the center-left candidate, Matteo Lepore, had been elected mayor, who obtained 62% of the vote against 29.5% of the center-right candidate Fabio Battistini.

Milan (North-west of Italy), curiously, a city where the economy and finances have a lot of weight, it re-elected its current mayor, Beppe Sala, also supported by the center-left alliance. Sala obtained 57.6% of the vote when counting 1,011 out of 1,248 polling stations. Center-right candidate Luca Bernardo obtained 32.2%.

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

Finally in Rome, the vote count was one of the slowest in the whole country. After 11 p.m. Italian time, 1,367 of the 2,603 ​​polling stations had been counted. Until then, the center-right candidate Enrico Michetti seemed to win (30.7% of the vote) but not to exceed 50% of the vote, for which the Italian capital should go to a second round which will face each other surely Michetti and Roberto Gualtieri. off, a center-left candidate who now obtains 26.8% of the vote.

Exit oral surveys

As soon as the polling stations closed, Monday at 3 p.m. Italian time, the exit polls were broadcast, that is to say the result of the exit polls which presented an overview of what would later be confirmed by official data.

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

Turin and Rome, as already mentioned before the elections, were presented according to the exit polls, as the cities which will almost certainly have to pass a second round. In Rome, neither the center-left candidate 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% voices. In fact, according to those predictions, center-right candidate Michetti would get more votes than Gualtieri, which later turned out to be the opposite. But the difference could be made from the second round when Gualtieri could ally, as some analysts predict, with the M5S and with the list of Carlo Calenda, former member of the Democratic Party (center-left) to which Gualtieri belongs.

For Turin, the forecasts were very uncertain and disparate between the different polls. But the low participation 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 has achieved the worst percentage in its history this year. Voter attendance was around 48%, while in the 2016 election it was over 57% and 10 years ago it was around 65%.