Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[El Betico]

On Sunday Umbria is going to vote for regional elections...great test match...is the M5S-PD axis winnable on national level? Is the Salvini-led centre-right a viable option on road to national election?

[El Betico]

Things to watch about Umbria elections:

1) In the past, recent past, Umbria was totally a left-wing stronghold...since 1970, the year of the first Italian regional election, only The Left( from Italian Communist Party to PD) has ruled Umbria

2) Now you have a Forza Italia mayor of Perugia( elected in 2014 in the runoff and re-elected in May in the first round with over 60% of the votes...I guess he's quite popular as a mayor), and a member of the League as mayor of Terni, which is a city quite similar to a Rust Belt town economically and culturally speaking...having a right-wing mayor of Terni is like having a right-wing mayor of Buffalo, from a certain point of a view, but not a traditional conservative one in this case

3) After 2018 general elections, Umbria is represented in Rome only by right-wing politicians, considering only the first-past-the-post-constituencies...their candidate for regional president, Donatella Tesei, is the sitting senator from Terni FPTP constituency

4) For the first time ever, M5S and PD are running together behind the same candidate for president

5) Winner of 2015( and 2010) regional election, PD's Catiuscia Marini, was forced to resign because of a corruption scandal that hit her party in the Healthcare sector

6) Centre-right is not united...their candidate in the 2015 election, moderate Claudio Ricci, is running alone with a so-called civic coalition, opposed to Tesei, who is backed by Ricci former party Forza Italia

Umbria may be a small region, but there is so much at stake on its Sunday elections...who will be hit by final results? The center-left plus M5S coalition, with M5S probably running alone in future elections in case of a bad result, or a centre-right now even formally led by Salvini with the moderates sidelined?

( Yes, I'm a Spaniard...but I'm paying a big attention to the Italian developments because a successful Left + M5S government I think it could in some ways influence developments in my home country...M5S, in many ways, is a milder, on left side, version of Podemos).

[El Betico]

Oh, a side note...if the right-wing candidate Donatella Tesei won, she'd be the third female Umbrian regional president in a row, after Maria Rita Lorenzetti( 2000-2010) and Catiuscia Marini( 2010-2019)...peculiar, thinking that as of today, in the rest of Italy, only Aosta Valley, with Nicoletta Spelgatti, and Friuli Venezia Giulia, with Alessandra Guerra, had had a female as their president of the region...either Spelgatti and Guerra were member of the League party.

[El Betico]

Yes, you're totally right, I guess my memory had "a little" faltered...still, I think from this point of view Umbria is a huge exception in Italian "panorama", nearly 20 years without having a male regional president who isn't merely an acting one...being a motor sports follower, I also happen to know that in the late Marco Simoncelli home town of Coriano( Emilia Romagna) they hadn't had a male for mayor since 1993...by the way, it was only a simple and abstract observation, I don't think it will be in any case an issue, and -based on polls I have seen- Italy even doesn't have a real gender gap when it comes to vote.

[El Betico]

Umbria is like Trumbull County or sort of, I think...long-time left-wing stronghold who fell in love with a particular rightist leader...no way a Berlusconi-led centre-right could have won there, like no other Republican presidential candidate could have won Trumbull and similar ones.

To complete the argument: I think it's the poorest non-Southern region, so I don't think immigration in much of an issue there...Salvini success in this former Communist stronghold should have other reasons.

[El Betico]

The Italian right seems to overperform the polls in this case? This seemed to be a tight race according to the polls...

the last polls was in right favor  but not so much. In the last (Eu and regionals) elections, I observed that the italian polls tended to underestimated the right.

My bet: Salvini shy-voters, in particular if they are of Southern origin.

[El Betico]

Allied with the centre-left, M5S is the new Communist Refoundation in terms of votes received( during my Italian University Years, I really had a political crush on its leader Bertinotti...I thought high of him even on a European level, he's totally disappeared).

[El Betico]

Nonetheless, the defeat for the "structural alliance between PD and M5S" faction is quite bitter.

Yeah, the biggest loser here (other than the people of Umbria) is M5S, not only because of the utter wipeout in the election itself but because it's led by a nitwit who'll probably take this as evidence that his party is Better Off Going It Alone.

"Il patto civico per l'Umbria lo abbiamo sempre considerato un laboratorio, ma l'esperimento non ha funzionato. Il Movimento nella sua storia non aveva mai provato una strada simile. E questa esperienza testimonia che potremo davvero rappresentare la terza via solo guardando oltre i due poli contrapposti"lo scrive il M5S in un post sulla propria pagina di Facebook.

"We always thought of the "Civic pact for Umbria" as a laboratory, but the experiment didn't work. The Movement had never tried before a similar approach in its history. And this experience shows that we can really be the Third Way only looking outside of the two opposite political poles", writes M5S on a note on its official Facebook page.

Sorry for possibile bad translating, but roughly this is basically what it says. They were pretty fast to realize your prediction.

[El Betico]

List of Italian regional governments after Umbria update

Aosta Valley: coalition of local autonomist parties, led by Union Valdotaine
Piedmont: Centre-right
Lombardy: Centre-right
Liguria: Centre-right( next election on Spring 2020)
Veneto: Centre-right( next election on Spring 2020)
Friuli Venezia-Giulia: Centre-right
Trentino-South Tyrol: no regional government but two provincial ones, in Trento Centre-right, in Bozen SVP with League as junior coalition partner
Emilia-Romagna: Centre-left( next election on January 26th, 2020)
Tuscany: Centre-left( next election on Spring 2020)
Umbria: Centre-right
Marche: Centre-left( next election on Spring 2020)
Lazio: Centre-left( Nicola Zingaretti)
Abruzzo: Centre-right
Molise: Centre-right
Campania: Centre-left( next election on Spring 2020)
Apulia: Centre-left( next election on Spring 2020)
Basilicata: Centre-right
Calabria: Centre-left( next election on December or January, date still unknown)
Sicily: Centre-right
Sardinia: Centre-right

[El Betico]

Can somebody please explain the current platform differences between Lega and Fratelli d’Italia?

Lega still wants authonomy for Northern Regions...Hermanos de Italia, I don't think the are big fans of it.

[El Betico]

For what it's worth yesterday I was able to speak to a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Lega.
He said that the M5S members of Parliament are the first who privately would like the Constitutional Referendum to fail. (He is against the cut to the number of members of Parliament)



My take on the regions is this:
Veneto - Absolutely Titanium Centre-right
Liguria - Almost Safe Centre-right
Marche - Tossup
Puglia - Tossup
Toscana - Likely Centre-left
Campania - Likely Centre-left
Aosta Valley - ??

My take on the by-elections:
Villafrance di Verona - Absolutely Titanium Centre-right
Sassari - Tossup? Sardinia has been very weird as of lately



P. S. This is my first post here. I don't know how much I will interact with this thread because I kind of have an instinctive distrust for foreigners discussing Italian politics. To be fair I also have an instinctive distrust for Italians discussing Italian politics. I don't know. The less people mention Salvini or Conte or whomever, the better.

If this can make you feel safer, I am half Italian on my mother's side and almost a native speaker...I saw the most recent polls, and it seems that Marche Region is instead likely centre-right and Tuscany a tossup with only a slight centre-left leaning tendency...are these polls really reliable? I found them on the governative poll-collecting site www.sondaggipoliticoelettorali.it....sort of rcp polls, only directly owned by the government, from what i see. For what is worth, I have Italian leftist friends worried about Tuscany...anyway,  the polls show that both Fitto and Ceccardi( Apulia and Tuscany centre-right candidates) are in the low 40s...so if many 5S voters decide to go for the left, like they did in Emilia Romagna, victory is all but assured. Don't know why at least in Marche centre-left and M5S aren't running together.

[El Betico]

Campania being safer for the left than Tuscany is something...weird. But I think Vincenzo De Luca personality is what makes the difference...yes, I've seen some of his Covid-related youtube shows.

[El Betico]

Umbria is not "Italian Ohio", is Italian West Virginia, if any.

That said, I am wondering if the most recent crime news, specifically anti-immigrant violence near Rome and anti-LGBT near Naples, are going to play a role in the campaign.