Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Estrella]

lmaoooo

https://mobile.twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1366489962745651205

[Estrella]

It was a surprise move - and I still think it might be a tactical one, aimed at being reconfirmed at the national assembly and shut all internal minorities.

In general, I think a discussion about PD's placement and alliances is necessary, the push towards M5S is too strong to ignore. Conte has been praised and defended beyond all sense, and now if he is to lead M5S there is a real risk that PD ends up losing masses of votes.

I agree that the placement with regards to M5S has not been dealt with greatly, but I don't think that the solution is to lapdog Renzi instead, and my understanding is that the centrist currents definitely want to lapdog Renzi.

You'd think they'd see Renzi's MASSIVE SUPPORT of 3-4% and put two and two together.

[Estrella]

We should also have the final outline of the main candidates in the regional election in Calabria, since the centre-left and M5S have officialized their joint candidate in Maria Antonietta Ventura, president of the regional chapter of UNICEF.

...and her candidacy was extremely short-lived. Ventura renounced a few days ago, and the Calabrian centre-left has to be in chaos now.

Coincidentally Marie Antoinette also got cut short.

Can't believe people keep telling these stale puns thinking they're something revolutionary.

[Estrella]

I have a historical question unrelated to this election: what causes the differences between some parties' results in the Chamber and the Senate? I know that there's a higher voting age for the latter, but I'm not sure if that explains it. It's especially interesting during the First Republic - today it could be due to personalities or whatever, but I wonder what was behind it in the old rigid party system.

[Estrella]

A Mattarella second term is being talked about again, with support from Salvini of all people.

[Estrella]

The peak of the Atlas brand of dweebery is watching random old election coverage from other countries, preferably in a language you don't understand. I couldn't find much for Italy, but what I did find was fascinating. Italian election nights used to be wild.

A clip from "TG1 Non Stop Elections 1983", the coverage of the first network for the general elections of 1983. The entertainment part is entrusted to Raffaella Carrà and Beppe Grillo while Bruno Vespa takes care of the vote counting. Raffaella opens the programme with "Ballo Ballo" and then welcomes the first great guest, Bonnie Tyler, who performs "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

With how long it takes America to count the votes, I'm sure their networks could squeeze in a musical number or two.

[Estrella]

Your previews are great! What's the situation in national politics right now? Has the Draghi government passed any major policies? Do they plan to stay on until the election next year?

[Estrella]

lmao, if Renzi really wants to go alone against a coalition that goes all the way from Speranza to Calenda, he really doesn't give a sh*t anymore. He'd rather destroy any political relevance he might have had than cooperate with Letta. I guess I shouldn't be surprised but I am, a little bit.

Could not one counterargue that if the Right wing bloc is going to win no matter what then Renzi should prioritize holding on to his limited vote base?  Joining a Center-Left bloc would just mean his voters drift back to PD.  There is an argument that Renzi should try to expand his vote base which gives him more bargaining power next election when there is a chance that a Center-Left bloc can win.

his what

Renzi's centrism can be summed up as "everyone hates me, therefore I'm right". Nobody who doesn't already vote for him will be convinced to back him in five years. Of course you could say that everyone hates Berlusconi and he still keeps getting his 45% 30% 15% 7%, but the difference is that he has an actual base, decrepit as it is. Renzi isn't polarizing because you need two poles for that.

[Estrella]

After some time thinking, I will not be abstaining this election, as my vote has the impact of tanking most of the centrist grifter parties and completely breaking PD’s ability to regroup once and for all, allowing better organizations to have breathing room.

I am voting for the UP alliance on account of them being the least s•••e option on being the least likely to join the governing coalition and being right there in tanking the centrist party. The PCI, one of the strongest in Europe in the past, has completely gone full stupid in adopting left-populism. It is time to crash this M5S driven-train with no survivors.

The PCI has completely gone full stupid in continuing with the Historic Compromise forty years past its sell-by date and turned themselves into Lib Dems all'italiano in the process. A few cranks with the same name does not a successor make.

[Estrella]

Bizarre that Italy has so many one-man-show microparties when the electoral system is so punishing

Over the past thirty years, Italy has demonstrated that changing the electoral system has very little impact on how politics actually works. A certain type of British (or Canadian, or American) progressive reformist should perhaps think about that.

[Estrella]

Very off topic, but it's so weird how during the 20th century Italy produced so much of world's cutting-edge graphic design (and design in general, of course) and yet 90% of these symbols look like they're from a 1995 middle school project – as does the official notice above them and election night graphics on every TV channel. Like, why?

[Estrella]

Very off topic, but it's so weird how during the 20th century Italy produced so much of world's cutting-edge graphic design (and design in general, of course) and yet 90% of these symbols look like they're from a 1995 middle school project – as does the official notice above them and election night graphics on every TV channel. Like, why?

You're an out of touch elite, I'm afraid

Would this be more to taste of ordinary Italians?

[Estrella]

/snip

A nominally social democratic party and a nominally centrist liberal technocratic party have no business having basically the same patterns of support, but that's Italy for you.

[Estrella]

Oversimplified hot take: all of Italy is going muh trendz, it's just the South is fifty years late as usual. While PSI and PPI were rising in the North, it stuck to the old Liberal machines. While DC and PCI were battling it out nationally, the South was still giving loads of votes to post-pre-1900-liberals and post-fascists. When PSI started breaking into the South, in the North it had already become a throughly #trends-ised middle class party. In the 1990s and 2000s, the South kept voting as if it was 1948 and Berlusconi posters said "Dio te vede, Stalin no." And today, the impoverished, frustrated region is voting the way it would have voted in any normal country in the 1970s, just adjusted for the very 2022 choice of parties.

[Estrella]

Congratulations to Italy's new social democratic party. The increasingly pathetic attempts at cosplaying as DC thirty years after their way of doing politics was completely discredited were getting kind of old.

[Estrella]

Since we're talking about maps, the 90s and Sicily, here's perhaps the funniest (or at least most stereotypical) electoral map in existence. Behold, Mario Segni's 1993 referendum on replacing PR with FPTP for Senate elections telling the First Republic political class and associated criminals to get fxcked:



Highest % for Yes: Lega heartlands of upland Veneto and Lombardy
Lowest % for Yes: Palermo