Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Andrea Frailis (Progressives for Sardinia) 40.46% ELECTED

I assume this is some sort of local PD satellite?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What would happen to FI if Berlusconi becomes President?

My dad joked re: the aforementioned deal with Renzi, that in exchange Berlusconi might let him take the leadership of FI.

That would be hilarious, I'm all for it.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

On another note, Azione and +Europa have joined together in a "federation" and can be considered for most intents and purposes a single entity now. The first opinion poll I saw with Azione-+Europa constituting a single option had it at around 5%. Calenda was confident that it can reach 10% - I would not be so sure, but mid single digits would already be a respectable showing.

'There are too many minor centrist parties in Italy. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot!'

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

He should let them re-elect him and then either immediately resign or dissolve parliament and then resign.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

There counting right now, right?

About to begin.

Let's see if it's the final one.

It should be. Mattarella is expected to get over 800 votes.

Yeah, I'm watching a live feed of the count, and the Counting Chair says Mattarella's name over and over again as each ballot is given to him.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The situation between Conte and Draghi has been tense ever since Di Maio left the M5S. The two are expected to meet next Monday but for now there is a lot of "unease" with accusations from the Five Stars that Draghi engineered the split and rumours about the party potentially leaving the government.

Relatedly, new polls have come out - some of them put IpF at significantly more than 1% (meaning 3-4%), while the long decline of the "populist" parties continues, with Lega hitting a new post-2018 low under 14% and a couple of outliers even showing M5S in single digits.

Draghi would still have a comfortable majority if M5S leaves the government, but M5S seems like they are just at the verge of extinction. I wasn't aware that Di Maio was able to "steal" almost a third of the M5S to his new party. If somehow, M5S ceases to exist by the next election, who would benefit? Di Maio's party or PD? I'm probably gonna rule out Lega, Berlusconi and FdI as possible options for former M5S voters.

Draghi would indeed have a solid majority regardless (and the M5S seems more interested in a position of external support/confidence and supply than full opposition) but it's clear that there would be some unwillingness to just carry on after such a major change in composition.

The M5S is in a rather damaged state but it's still not particularly close to being wiped out (and of course, Di Maio's strength in Parliament is not equal to his strength among the voters). If somehow it just disappeared before the next election I would expect everyone else's polling numbers to improve but with PD and perhaps IpF taking the lion's share... however that's more or less out of the question, unless a merge happened, which in turn only seems more and more unlikely given Conte's antics. I can see the party merely fading into irrelevance though.

Could IpF just end up joining the centre-left?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I refuse to suffer alone:

https://twitter.com/nonleggerlo/status/1550505114837962757

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

or quite a number of Southern voters (particularly in Sicily I think), who appear to skew unemployed.

There seemed to be a lean towards housewives, or am I misremembering?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

or quite a number of Southern voters (particularly in Sicily I think), who appear to skew unemployed.

There seemed to be a lean towards housewives, or am I misremembering?

Probably. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the strongest predictor of FI vote was how many hours of TV per day a person watched on average between, say, 1990 and 2010.

Probably impossible, but someone should do this analysis with both Berlusconi and Trump voters.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The mention of Ingroia made me want to check what Luigi De Magistris is doing and apparently he is pushing hard for a left-wing populist alliance with M5S, Greens and Left - and his microparty of course; lots of contacts between him and good old Alessandro Di Battista.

I'm sure you aren't surprised by my one-note takes on modern Italian politics at this point, but I think I'd have to vote for this if it happened.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The mention of Ingroia made me want to check what Luigi De Magistris is doing and apparently he is pushing hard for a left-wing populist alliance with M5S, Greens and Left - and his microparty of course; lots of contacts between him and good old Alessandro Di Battista.

I'm sure you aren't surprised by my one-note takes on modern Italian politics at this point, but I think I'd have to vote for this if it happened.

I could not quite blame you but that is also a good reason why it must not happen. Although it is interesting that those parties are seemingly pretty close on policy but also very different in their vote bases...

The Greens and the designated left-of-the-social-democrats party having different voter bases to the designated labour party? Many such cases

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The mention of Ingroia made me want to check what Luigi De Magistris is doing and apparently he is pushing hard for a left-wing populist alliance with M5S, Greens and Left - and his microparty of course; lots of contacts between him and good old Alessandro Di Battista.

I'm sure you aren't surprised by my one-note takes on modern Italian politics at this point, but I think I'd have to vote for this if it happened.

I could not quite blame you but that is also a good reason why it must not happen. Although it is interesting that those parties are seemingly pretty close on policy but also very different in their vote bases...

The Greens and the designated left-of-the-social-democrats party having different voter bases to the designated labour party? Many such cases

However actually "designated" labour parties often have a voter base that is less like M5S and more like in between M5S and PD. Except the Labour Party par excellence of course, as long as the Tories keep bribing the old with ground rent and the Greens keep being a joke.

Correct, which is why everyone involved ought to stop resisting the obvious realignment of the Italian left now that the opportunity may be on the horizon. Maybe if M5S manages to not blow itself up by the time Girlboss Meloni inevitably falters...

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Isn't Letta ex-DC

Yes, but it doesn't matter much [or at any rate, less than allying with AVS, his personal feud with Renzi, the general direction of the party and so on]. It does make this even more hilarious though.

Yeah, these days the old "ex DC vs ex PCI" divide doesn't really explain PD factional politics that well. There are tons of ex-PCI types who have turned into shameless neolibs, and even a few ex-DC who are pretty left-wing (like Rosy Bindi back in her days).

It remains interesting and telling for other reasons but absolutely does not predict policy preferences or personal relations, yes.

It predicts a depressing amount of bullsh**t factional thinking however. Economic turboliberals calling each other comrades... is central Emilia just the Dąbrowa Basin with ravioli instead of pierogi? many people are saying this.

I think the levels of casual clientelism ouroboros practiced by your typical Dąbrowa Basin SLD (sorry, NOWA LEWICA) apparatchik may put even Sicilian politicians to shame sometimes, but basically yes.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Isn't Letta ex-DC

Yes, but it doesn't matter much [or at any rate, less than allying with AVS, his personal feud with Renzi, the general direction of the party and so on]. It does make this even more hilarious though.

Yeah, these days the old "ex DC vs ex PCI" divide doesn't really explain PD factional politics that well. There are tons of ex-PCI types who have turned into shameless neolibs, and even a few ex-DC who are pretty left-wing (like Rosy Bindi back in her days).

It remains interesting and telling for other reasons but absolutely does not predict policy preferences or personal relations, yes.

It predicts a depressing amount of bullsh**t factional thinking however. Economic turboliberals calling each other comrades... is central Emilia just the Dąbrowa Basin with ravioli instead of pierogi? many people are saying this.

I think the levels of casual clientelism ouroboros practiced by your typical Dąbrowa Basin SLD (sorry, NOWA LEWICA) apparatchik may put even Sicilian politicians to shame sometimes, but basically yes.

Ah, but consider: did any Dąbrowa Basin party apparatchik ever do something as egregious as the Sack of Palermo [obligatory Al bait after the you bait of my previous post]?

You've got me there, maybe a bit further north in, say, Starachowice though. That said, how many Sicilians ever almost fell for con artists who pretended to be members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta offering the city 40 million dollars they (obviously) didn't have in exchange for IOUs?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I wonder what the 538 odds would be for who wins here.

With a 15 to 20-points lead? Probably around 95%. Maybe 90% if they account for the historical unreliability of Italian polls and the 2-weeks gap.

On that note though, a friend of mine is related to certain well-connected people who happen to have gotten their hands on an illegal poll. Mostly the numbers it shows aren't too different from those pre-09/10, but the main difference seems to be Lega losing and M5S gaining. So I guess that's the main place to look out for over- and underperformances this Sunday.

M5S around 15, Lega under 10, let's gooooo~

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I'm pretty sure the party distribution is national for the House (they are still broken down by constituency, but only after the national party distribution).

Right. This is the part I struggle with... just... what? It seems completely nonsensical?

Italy just have a normal electoral law challenge (screaming, crying, throwing up)

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Snip

From Tuscany and points south these patterns are rather familiar, with the exception of the disappearance of a few old strongholds in parts of the South (c.f. Naples city, Messina and parts of Calabria). But in the North... although the area of greatest strength (the South West of Veneto) always saw relatively good results for the old AN in the 1990s, this is very much a new electoral world and a quite remarkable one. Many rural districts where the old AN polled its worst percentages in all of Italy saw extremely strong FdI results this time around. There are breakthroughs and then there's, well, that.

Snip

Similar to last time, but there are some interesting differences and they are consistently in the direction of a less weird map by historical standards.

Snip

Vastly reduced in scale, yet the same dominant geographical theme still appears. But look a little closer: in much of the country this is clearly a much more 'left-wing' geography than seen before.

Well, that's the funny thing, isn't it - if anything this election has seen a mild reversal of MUH TRENDZ (tho, of course, buried under a right-wing landslide), but observers seem to be falling over themselves to proclaim the exact opposite...