Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Being reported that M5S wants to join the PES, which I suppose makes sense given that its voter profile now looks amusingly like that of a social democratic party. Looking at its vote distribution in Rome recently, I did joke that Italian politics finally has what it has been missing: an extremely ineffectual labour party.

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Obligatory

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This is extremely, extremely funny.

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Italy is one of those countries in which public opinion is now apt to shift quite radically over the course of a campaign: for instance the last election was assumed to be an easy victory for the Right coalition and it was assumed that the PD would not collapse catastrophically in the South. However.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean, yeah, but that doesn't mean old grudges are suddenly forgotten. The rhetoric between PD and M5S before and during the 2018 campaign was extremely violent (with some M5S figure at one point even devolving into QAnon-adjacent rhetoric). And Renzi's only reason for being in politics at this point seems to be to make life hell for his enemies. It's possible they end up together for self-preservation purposes, but it won't be a happy alliance.

Given the way Italian politics tends to go, from this description it almost sounds crashingly, hilariously inevitable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, 'Genepool DCs for Unspecified Reform!!!!!' is not a massive section of the electorate, to put it mildly, and by this point everyone else thinks that Renzi is (how shall we put it) a fine example of a Country Member.

The tendency for small parties to poll better when they form part of joint lists seems at first to be bizarre as that's really not how things work elsewhere, but it makes perfect sense if you think of parties and lists as the average Italian voter does. No one wants to waste their vote and, frankly, most of these parties and lists won't be around (at least not in the same form, with the same branding) next time round, so it becomes a matter of functional electoral credibility.

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In fairness they struggle to remember themselves often.

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Pizzarotti's outfit will run with Italia Viva.

It has already ended in tears.

As a wise man once said: lol, lmao, lol.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Isn't Letta ex-DC

Yes. Though, I mean, you only need to look at him to know that haha.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

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This is going to be an absolute bloody massacre isn't it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For the most part it would be a return to how things were the last time they were in charge, which, well,  was substantially responsible for the complete mess the country has been in (is still in) subsequently...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is Azione/IV, what makes them different from the PD and why are they not part of the center-left alliance?

Genepool DCs for rEfORm.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

but in this particular case I can only think of one reason why it would be so much more motivated than the rest of the country.

Is this the bad reason that immediately popped into my head or something I'm missing - which is certainly quite possible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, perhaps it would be fairer to say that there are two interconnected reasons: Lazio's own, er, rich history of neofascist sympathies, and the fact that Meloni herself is from Rome.

As I feared then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

but M5S' result is the surprise of the night. No idea what their appeal still is, after 100,000 U turns...

Basically they're an accidental parody of an ineffectual labour party these days, which turns out to be (it appears) the one viable route to survival. Of course it's rather damning of the PD that this happens to be the case, but, well, what to say.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Right won the Livorno constituency, I note. Which roughly translates as 'Con gain Rhondda', even if, sure, this is a little harder than 'Con' - but then the traditions there were a little harder than 'Lab' as well, so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worth remembering that the old National Alliance (the successor to the MSI and the forerunner to the FdI) polled double digits at every General Election during its existence and peaked at 16% in 1996. This is obviously beyond that, but I don't think the idea that the political Right in the future might be dominated by a party from the old fascist tradition would have struck anyone back then as outlandish. This is very much a re-emergence (and how) not a new phenomenon.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Interior Ministry published a (tentative, since there are still a few dozen unreported precincts) distribution of PR seats, which gives 114 seats to the right in the House and 56 in the Senate - one fewer than I estimated in each. Not sure if the results moved a bit since I last calculated them or if I didn't use the right formula, but either way, worth noting.

How are the PR seats doled out again? If I remember right they still have constituencies but... it's done nationally? So are the number of seats worked out nationally and then just filled out at constituency level without having to align with votes cast in them, or...?

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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?

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...

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Can we not have arguments that are actually about American political psychodramas in this thread? Thank you.

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I notice that my earlier assessment that the right lucked out with marginals in the House was exaggerated. Of the 11 seats that were decided by less than 2 points, it looks like the right won 5, and the left and M5S won 3 each, which is as fair a distribution as one can imagine. The right did win a disproportionate amount of seats by 2 to 5 points - I count 8 on this map, compared to 2 for the left and 1 Sicilian Indy - but by that point the sheer fact that they won the most seats has to weigh in.

I think it's an impression you can get by looking at the Tuscan results (the product of a very oddly drawn map that functions as a vicious anti-PD+ gerrymander in a bad year) but it doesn't hold elsewhere, yes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.



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.



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.