Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Battista Minola 1616]

No is winning in the city centres of Milan, Turin and Rome. Usual centre-periphery trend.

Lol this is *exactly* what I was expecting to happen.

Digressing, the precinct I am at was won by Toti (narrowly) but PD and Lega tied exactly at 66 votes and I find it funny.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Looks like Lega is behind in Tuscany in exit polls.  Oh well, I was hoping they could filip this one

"Scratch a libertarian..."

Relieving to see Tuscany leaning towards keeping in its leftist traditions. Fingers crossed for Puglia.

"...and find a tradcath"

(yesterday a friend of mine sent me an article according to which Ceccardi hosted a wake by an anti-gay tradcath group and was accused of not registering civil unions during her term as mayor)

Fingers crossed!!!

...who the hell has an ideology-specific wake

Never mind, I digress. First results trickling in from Veneto and it looks like a real ZAIASLIDE.

Tradcats do. They refuse the Vatican II reforms and so, it's still all said in Latin.

It's not the idea of an FSSP or ICKSP or whatever wake that's baffling to me, it's the idea of a wake that manages to be expressly anti-gay.

As far as I was able to reckon:

1. They seem to protest pretty much everything of what most people would call gay rights.

2. Given that their name is Sentinelle in piedi i.e. "Standing watchguards" what they did is not surprising.

P. S. I think I misused the word tradcath. I am not sure what they believe about Vatican II. I guess I meant tradcon. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Looking good for the PS and a disaster for Five Stars Movement

What is the PS?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Looking good for the PS and a disaster for Five Stars Movement

What is the PS?

I think he means PD. Typo error, I assume.

Or maybe he's still salty about the French PS completely going shıt.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The relatively weak Yes votes in Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, was that to be expected? Like the latter in particular doesn't strike me as the kind of place that would stand out in that direction?

It wasn't particularly expected, although it makes sense if you imagine a lot of Lega voters voting No to try to embarrass the government. Then again, the Lombardy vote is on par with the national average, so maybe the explanation is not so easy. And TAA is over 70% Yes for some reason.

When the number of total Senators gets cut by 33% but TAA only passes from 7 to 6, I guess Trentinians and South Tyroleans will find the option very appealing.

[Battista Minola 1616]

I have now finished my work as a poll worker and have just got home. It was actually pretty boring.

I am waiting for more precincts reporting for the regionals.

To parochial boy and Antonio: see my post about TAA gaining relative representation through this.

[Battista Minola 1616]

YOUR REVOLUTION IS OVER, CECCARDI! CONDOLENCES! THE FASH LOST! THE FASH WILL ALWAYS LOSE!

If it wasn't too long, I would change my display name to "In the privacy of the polling booth, God sees you - Salvini doesn't".

[Battista Minola 1616]

The man, the myth, the legend, the one and only VINCENZO DE LUCA speaking now.

MR. VINCENT DE LUCA 😎

Unbeatable Titan Vincenzo De Luca!

[I promised the display name would be out today]

[Battista Minola 1616]

All referendum votes have been counted. Yes has won with 69.64% of the votes.

To the dismay of Edu and Antonio among others, Italians Abroad has been a Yes landslide bigger than any region save Molise.
My region, Liguria, has been one of only three where No cracked 35%, which is slightly relieving.

Final turnout is slightly above 50%, which is bad but not abysmal. More than 26,000,000 people have voted.

After screening for whether or not a region had regional elections, the geographic turnout differential has been pretty small, which is a good turnabout, because after 2018 (77% in the North - 68% in the South) and 2019 (62.5% in the North - 46.5% in the South), I was not necessarily expecting to see Piedmont and Lombardy at 51.5% vs Abruzzo+Basilicata+Calabria+Molise at 48.5%. Exception are the Islands, which always disappoint on this front, and for some obscure reason, our friends in TAA.

[Battista Minola 1616]

So how do those results compare with previously?

It depends on what you mean with "previously".

Last regional cycle (2015) Italy was still in the midst of a Renzi crush.
Last parliamentary elections (2018) Italy was high on Five Star sugar.
Last European elections (2019) are probably the most comparable and what you'd get is basically "the left has gained" but to very different degrees in different places.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Possibly clueless #analysis and musings:

I know that the blowout in Campania and record-high percentages for the right in Red Belt were local results with all that follows from that. Still, I wonder if we might see a trend where both Central and Southern Italy become some sort of...swing regions? Something like if right wins, they'll be winning in Emilia-Romagna and if left wins, they'll be winning in Apulia - because of/despite the likelihood that the 2013 and 2018 three-cornered freak shows were aberrations that won't be repeated anytime soon.

Methinks that Fratelli are not Forza and will never be getting those kinds of results in the South, while Lega is MSI boogaloo elettrico - not an explicitly regional party, but doing quite a bit better in one part of the county than others (and also crazy far-right nuts). Sure, the border of that part has shifted a few hundred kilometres southwards but they will not become a truly national force like Forza (hah) either. Point being, Salvini and Meloni will have strongholds in their respective halves of the country, but the former will be stronger than Berlusconi in formerly lefty places and the latter will be weaker than him in formerly righty ones.

No. The results in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany are in line with the previous two decades if you adjust for the national climate. They are still pretty red - although I reckon they are so in a different way from the past because of urban-rural polarization - they are not going to become swing regions.
Southern Italy *was* mostly a swing area before M5S happened, and I think it can come back to be one if the left plays its cards well.

I think your point about the regionality of the right-wing is correct, assuming the right-wing remains a Lega-FdI tandem. I wouldn't rule out crazy things happening, but of course I don't know what these crazy things would be.
Your point about formerly lefty and formerly righty areas is interesting but I am not sure how much I agree.

[Battista Minola 1616]

By the way:
The province of La Spezia has been the worst one for Toti. Yas!

I am a bit salty that he still won the city of La Spezia, however a funny thing is that here his personal list has done particularly badly and it is one of the few places where both Lega and FdI have beaten it.

I went check some precincts and the main culprit is that muh city centre liberals* voted big for Toti. However precinct no. 62 covering the noted #Communist village of Pitelli voted Sansa 67-32.

*in the European sense

[Battista Minola 1616]

I went check some precincts and the main culprit is that muh city centre liberals* voted big for Toti.

The success of Zaia's and Toti's personal lists, the Lega's relative(!) weakness and the assumption that FdI can't completely fill out the center-right space in the South make me think:

Is a tandem really a safe option for Lega and FdI or would the gave to gain a lot by including FI or some "moderate" successor in their alliance?

I don't know if that assumption is valid to be honest.
People forget that AN took 16% of the votes in 1996. And Fini had identified as a neofascist until two years and a half before. FdI can do even better in my opinion.

I don't know if they have to gain or not. I think FI will be a part of the coalition as long as the party exists, but I also think that they are slowly dying out and I have no idea how a moderate successor could look like.

[Battista Minola 1616]

No. The results in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany are in line with the previous two decades if you adjust for the national climate. They are still pretty red - although I reckon they are so in a different way from the past because of urban-rural polarization - they are not going to become swing regions.

Also the point is that the Left was able to win in Tuscany whilst running an actual block of wood as its candidate. Do that almost anywhere else, and the result would be (and often has been) decidedly less pretty. But what is true - and this is not a phenomenon unique to Italy! - is that party allegiances are weaker than they have ever been, and this means greater and greater electoral volatility. Occasionally this will mean results that, in combination, will look perverse. But they will not represent a new order.

Yes. If the left had had a Bonaccini-level candidate in Tuscany I think it would have been by more, like 12 to 15 percentage points.
Party allegiances have been extraordinarily weak in Italy in the last few years, but I sort of think that we have just reached and possibly passed a low point.

So, what happened in the Aosta Valley? Why did the AV local party get hit so hard?

I have no idea. Aosta Valley politics is pretty obscure (also reminder that the Aosta Valley has less people than the city of Livorno).

[Battista Minola 1616]

[...]
assumption that FdI can't completely fill out the center-right space in the South
[...]

I don't know if that assumption is valid to be honest.
People forget that AN took 16% of the votes in 1996. And Fini had identified as a neofascist until two years and a half before. FdI can do even better in my opinion.

And in parts of the South AN was even stronger than this. I know that a part of the Southern FI and CCD-CDU vote was not ideological, that today is a different time and that maybe FdI is more palatable than AN was in 1996. But still, in 1996 FI took over 20% in most of the South (in Sicily 32%), not even accounting for the CCD-CDU. I doubt that a party that is basically the successor of post-fascist AN without the moderate wing, can inherit (Southern) AN, FI and CCD-CDU at the same time.

No, but it doesn't need to, because Lega is far from inexistent in the South, and it would "inherit" part of those votes.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The election results were not "good" for the left.

Tuscany Right Increase 10.1%
Apulian  Right Increase 6.2%

LMAO
Maybe you mean they were not good for M5S?

2015 Tuscany, centre-left candidate Enrico Rossi - 48%
2020 Tuscany, centre-left candidate Eugenio Giani - 48.6%

2015 Apulia, centre-left candidate Michele Emiliano - 47.1%
2020 Apulia, centre-left candidate Michele Emiliano - 46.8%

[Battista Minola 1616]

Found out about the Tuscan regional elections when, yesterday, I got a postcard from the Italian Government telling me they were happening. Got here too late for me to actually make a decision, but I probably wouldn't have traveled all the way to Italy just to vote lmao. Fortunately, PD didn't need my help.

Also cast my first Italian vote ever in the Constitutional Referendum a few weeks ago -- voted no because I read somewhere that Lega supported it, but probably would have gone yes if I'd mailed by ballot after PD said they support it. Kind of feel bad that I'm about as high-info a voter as you can be in America, but I have no idea what's going on in Italy. Oh well. Staying up to date on America keeps my hands full

you voted the right way - as did the other Atlas Italians Abroad.

[Battista Minola 1616]

- MEGASNIP -

Apart from our - mostly rhetorical - disagreement on the last part (I am also frustrated like as hell at the idea of the fourth different electoral law in 15 years), I'll add this:

LIGURIA
Liguria I think will come back to its status as Red Region Lite. It's actually pretty urban. Genoa = 1/3 of Liguria.
Toti won by so much because his list slamdunked in the city of Genoa for I don't know what reason. It was unexpected.
La Spezia 2019: Right 45 - Left 35
Savona 2019: Right 41.5 - Left 38
Genoa 2019: Left 39.5 - Right 39

La Spezia 2020: Toti +4
Savona 2020: Toti +1
At which point you would expect Genoa to be say Sansa +5 or so and instead it was Toti +8. Meh.

I think Genoa will snap back to pretty left-leaning at the next national election.

TUSCANY
Thanks for the recognition hahaha, I literally spouted that just because I wanted to say "Siena hick Marxists" and then got along.
Lol at Ceccardi losing Cascina. Maybe we can arrest the suburban drift. There's also the fact that people in the town may be kinda enraged that in 2019 she said "whoops I was elected MEP, bye bye" and now her former deputy mayor is in charge of Cascina.

Yesterday Nathan wrote this - I am not sure he had Ceccardi in mind but I actually think it fits her well.

"political Catholicism is when you're right-wing; the more right-wing you are, the more Catholic it is " nonsense-mongering

> Opposed strongly the construction of a mosque in a city she's not even in charge of
> Gave honorary citizenship to Magdi Cristiano Allam
> Names her daughter after a legendary Pisan heroine who stopped a Saracen invasion

> Was accused of not registering civil unions
> So much a defender of the traditional family that she lives with her partner but they are not married or anything

Also this quote from late 2016: "Demonstrations against violence on women are not useful [...] teach them first of all how not to be preys"

Too bad that Ceccardi <Tender Branson> is actually a very good-looking woman </Tender Branson>

[Battista Minola 1616]

> So much a defender of the traditional family that she lives with her partner but they are not married or anything

I was reading about Giorgia Meloni on Wikipedia the other day and this is true of her too. And of course Salvini has been through three domestic partners since divorcing his wife in 2010. Lots of hypocrisy on this one very specific "lifestyle" issue on the Italian hard right.

Yeah lol and don't even get started on Berlusconi! Bunga Bunga.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Like you I think that Genoa voted so far for the Right this one time (because of the bridge?) and that Genoa will revert to a more left-wing course at the national level. I would be cautious though to put Genoa into the same basket as Milan, Bologna, etc. Genoa is very much a post-industrial city with different issues from other big cities.

Well yes Genoa is different from other big cities but is still prone to the left-wing lately as all big cities, although I reckon with a different internal geography.
La Spezia (and Savona) are also industrial and this presumably contributes to them being less bad than most for the left lately.
I should do a "La Spezia lay of the land" one day tbh.

[Battista Minola 1616]

To continue the points Battista and Palandio made, here's a comparison of Toti's scores in 2015 and 2020:
+22 in Imperia province (43% to 65%)
+19 in Savona province (40% to 59%)
+24 in Genoa city (28% to 52%)
+22 in Genoa province, city excluded (37% to 59%)
+18 in La Spezia province (33% to 51%)

So yeah, here as well there's been a stronger trend in Genoa proper than anywhere else. My guess would be that this was all about the bridge reconstruction, yeah. It's really frustrating, but I guess not particularly surprising. Oh well. Glad to see that La Spezia is still the most left-wing province! I guess this does bode reasonably well for the future.

I don't know what that bodes for the future to be honest except that I am happy because, you know, I live in La Spezia. In theory one would want Genoa to be the most left-wing because Genoa is where the most votes are found.

One thing I had not mentioned is that it's pretty telling (and sad) that the ciTy cEnTre bOurGeoIs precincts where as I said Toti won were very weak for Yes (and at least one voted No), while Communist Pitelli where as I said Sansa got a landslide were >75% for Yes (and the same can be said for another village, Biassa, precinct no. 48).

[Battista Minola 1616]

Okay I really don't get the argument for "no" on the referendum. Anything more than 300 representatives or so seems absurd. What's the point of having all of them?

300 representatives can't possibly "represent" jack sh*t in a country of 60 million inhabitants. I mean, granted, it's not like 600 representatives were doing a great job to begin with, but this will just make it worse.

That's 1/200,000 residents. Which is absolutely fine. I'd target one rep per 200,000-500,000 people as ideal in most countries. Places like the UK, with more than one MP/100,000 people are just absurd.

You know that's funny, seeing Blairite of all posters taking the muh rash populist position. If GMac comes here too arguing for Yes we may as well lock the thread lmao.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Okay I really don't get the argument for "no" on the referendum. Anything more than 300 representatives or so seems absurd. What's the point of having all of them?

300 representatives can't possibly "represent" jack sh*t in a country of 60 million inhabitants. I mean, granted, it's not like 600 representatives were doing a great job to begin with, but this will just make it worse.

That's 1/200,000 residents. Which is absolutely fine. I'd target one rep per 200,000-500,000 people as ideal in most countries. Places like the UK, with more than one MP/100,000 people are just absurd.

You know that's funny, seeing Blairite of all posters taking the muh rash populist position. If GMac comes here too arguing for No we may as well lock the thread lmao.

He is an avowed neoliberal, the "Downsizing Democracy" ideology par excellence. I'm not surprised.

But no, 1 MP for 200K people is not nearly enough. Even 1 per 100K is not enough. The ideal would be 1 every 1000 or so (which is of course impracticable in Italy, but there's no excuse for not having 600-700 MPs at the very least).

I mean I get why you are not surprised, but I found that ironic because I guess the closest Italian equivalent to neoliberals is the muh city centre bobo "PD is the party of ZTL's" crowd and they went pretty hard for No.

[Battista Minola 1616]

In practice the old Italian electoral system - the one used before 1994 - did allow for local representation, because it used open lists. Candidates would tend to focus their efforts on particular parts of the constituency that they ran in (these were huge) and if they were elected would concentrate constituency services in them as well. This extended to nationally prominent politicians: indeed, it was rather difficult to progress far in the DC without having a secure geographical base. So, Giulio Andreotti, who regularly topped the DC poll in the Rome-Viterbo-Latina-Frosinone constituency, always focused his efforts on the towns of the Valle Latina to the east of the city, rather than on the capital itself.

Yes. One of the main problems of the last national electoral law, and of the previous one, is that they don't allow for preference voting, which creates all sorts of problems.
Whereas European Parliament uses open lists (three preference votes) and I think almost all regions do (it probably depends - in Liguria there are two votes).
Sadly a sizable chunk of voters do not care about expressing preference votes even when they can, though.
Of course, well, European Parliament constituencies are HUGE, so at that level there is a bit of luck involved (like, I wouldn't be surprised if there were currently 0 MEPs from Basilicata). I guess I am lucky because there is a MEP from La Spezia - whom I voted for by the way.

[Battista Minola 1616]

There is an MEP form Basilicata

Count by region:
Lombardy: 16
Lazio: 13
Campania: 8
Sicily: 8
Veneto: 7
Emilia-Romagna: 5
Puglia: 5
Piemont: 3
Tuscany: 3
Friuli Venezia Giulia: 2
Liguria: 2
Basilicata: 1
Calabria: 1
Molise: 1
Sudtirol: 1

0 for Aosta, Umbria, Marche, Abruzzi and Sardinia.

Thanks for the research!

Well my point still stands (and even stands more, given that Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo and Sardinia have all larger populations than Basilicata).

Sardinia in particular kind of has it up the wazoo because the Islands constituency has only 8 seats, which means parties get at most 2 seats unless they make total slam dunks (by Italian standards), and Sicily having triple the inhabitants of Sardinia makes it very easy for the top Sardinian to be third of the list or so i.e. not elected.
I'd say the other constituencies work better though.