Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[If my soul was made of stone]

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...

i do wonder where guardian correspondents saw all the low-level milanese bureaucrats twirling their mustaches on the way to vote fdi and loudly cackling all dan backslide like "I SHALL PLUNGE EUROPE INTO A CENTURY OF DARKNESS CHAFING AGAINST THE YOKE OF HATEFUL, TYRANNICAL POPULISM! HA! HA!"

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Also, didn't Italy never really have a "normal" correlation between vote and income? The Red Regions have always been richer than the South.

To add to what Battista said: the Red Regions originally emerged as left-wing strongholds in the early 20th century because they had a very particular agricultural system which engendered violent class conflict between rural labourers and landowners. The flip side of this was that in the immediate post-WWI years, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were also the strongholds of Fascist popular support, where it found a natural base among the middle classes terrified by this working class radicalism.

My understanding, though, is that after WWII the nature of left-wing support in the Red Regions underwent quite a dramatic change from the above situation, and the PCI (which had of course supplanted the PSI as the dominant force on the left) became something of a cross-class phenomenon there, a deeply-engrained cultural institution. I’m not fully sure of the reasons for this, but I think it had something to do with these regions being the centre of anti-Fascist Resistance activity during the war. It probably also helped that the PCI was quite distinctive amongst left-wing parties in being founded as much on a core of intellectuals as the mass support of the organised working classes. That said, I think you would still have had much more relatively normal class-based electoral patterns during the First Republic in, for instance, the industrialised North.

Finally, I don’t think it makes sense to think of the South as being the kind of region which would be a natural base for the left in most other countries simply because it is poor. As Battista said, it is the least industrialised part of the country, and it also, for want of a better word, has always lacked ‘political consciousness’, which is certainly a consequence of its poverty, as well as historical and cultural circumstances. Its politics have tended to be based on clientelism and the like rather than the kind of ideological ‘mass politics’ in which socialist, social democratic, and communist parties traditionally tended to thrive.

I suppose the counterpoint is spain, where Andalusia and Extremadura were historical strongholds of the PSOE owing exactly to the sort of economic quasi feudal set up in the south?

[Alcibiades]

Also, didn't Italy never really have a "normal" correlation between vote and income? The Red Regions have always been richer than the South.

To add to what Battista said: the Red Regions originally emerged as left-wing strongholds in the early 20th century because they had a very particular agricultural system which engendered violent class conflict between rural labourers and landowners. The flip side of this was that in the immediate post-WWI years, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were also the strongholds of Fascist popular support, where it found a natural base among the middle classes terrified by this working class radicalism.

My understanding, though, is that after WWII the nature of left-wing support in the Red Regions underwent quite a dramatic change from the above situation, and the PCI (which had of course supplanted the PSI as the dominant force on the left) became something of a cross-class phenomenon there, a deeply-engrained cultural institution. I’m not fully sure of the reasons for this, but I think it had something to do with these regions being the centre of anti-Fascist Resistance activity during the war. It probably also helped that the PCI was quite distinctive amongst left-wing parties in being founded as much on a core of intellectuals as the mass support of the organised working classes. That said, I think you would still have had much more relatively normal class-based electoral patterns during the First Republic in, for instance, the industrialised North.

Finally, I don’t think it makes sense to think of the South as being the kind of region which would be a natural base for the left in most other countries simply because it is poor. As Battista said, it is the least industrialised part of the country, and it also, for want of a better word, has always lacked ‘political consciousness’, which is certainly a consequence of its poverty, as well as historical and cultural circumstances. Its politics have tended to be based on clientelism and the like rather than the kind of ideological ‘mass politics’ in which socialist, social democratic, and communist parties traditionally tended to thrive.

I suppose the counterpoint is spain, where Andalusia and Extremadura were historical strongholds of the PSOE owing exactly to the sort of economic quasi feudal set up in the south?

Exactly. I've actually seen this comparison between central Italy and Andalucia made quite a bit in the academic literature.

[Alcibiades]

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...

I think this sort of true and also sort of not true. When looking at PD exclusively, their coalition, as Al said, looks a little less weird than last time, but this is largely because they lost some of their wealthiest supporters to the Third Pole, and re-gained some more working-class ones in certain regions (notably Liguria) from M5S. That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

As a side note, one of the more significant shifts from 2018 as indicated by exit polling was the 18-24 age bracket swinging towards the CSX. This is I suppose a small silver lining, and a welcome counterpoint to the narrative of FASCIST ZOOMERS we've seen recently in the likes of France and Sweden.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Also, didn't Italy never really have a "normal" correlation between vote and income? The Red Regions have always been richer than the South.

To add to what Battista said: the Red Regions originally emerged as left-wing strongholds in the early 20th century because they had a very particular agricultural system which engendered violent class conflict between rural labourers and landowners. The flip side of this was that in the immediate post-WWI years, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were also the strongholds of Fascist popular support, where it found a natural base among the middle classes terrified by this working class radicalism.

My understanding, though, is that after WWII the nature of left-wing support in the Red Regions underwent quite a dramatic change from the above situation, and the PCI (which had of course supplanted the PSI as the dominant force on the left) became something of a cross-class phenomenon there, a deeply-engrained cultural institution. I’m not fully sure of the reasons for this, but I think it had something to do with these regions being the centre of anti-Fascist Resistance activity during the war. It probably also helped that the PCI was quite distinctive amongst left-wing parties in being founded as much on a core of intellectuals as the mass support of the organised working classes. That said, I think you would still have had much more relatively normal class-based electoral patterns during the First Republic in, for instance, the industrialised North.

Finally, I don’t think it makes sense to think of the South as being the kind of region which would be a natural base for the left in most other countries simply because it is poor. As Battista said, it is the least industrialised part of the country, and it also, for want of a better word, has always lacked ‘political consciousness’, which is certainly a consequence of its poverty, as well as historical and cultural circumstances. Its politics have tended to be based on clientelism and the like rather than the kind of ideological ‘mass politics’ in which socialist, social democratic, and communist parties traditionally tended to thrive.

Great post! This reminded me to share something topical and funny about my background. One of my great-grandmothers was a mezzadra until she effectively retired, and her husband - besides helping her with field work - was a railwayman. They lived, like most if not all of that side of my family, in a village next to here which was turbo-Communist even by the standards of this already pretty Red area. And... as far as I know when they voted it was for the DC.

Then again, apparently two of my other great-grandfathers voted PSDI at least for some time, so I guess I really come from a family of outliers.

[Oppo]

https://twitter.com/sbidimedia/status/1575828323141156864?s=46&t=9wRdc0mldSo...

Let’s goooooo….

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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...

This is because so-called "pundits" have the memory of goldfish and have already forgotten that Renzi's PD last time managed some amazing feats like doing better in Parioli than Testaccio (crying) or being above average in the Bergamo province (wtf), just like they forgot everything about the pre-2018 M5S vote, just like they forgot that Alleanza Nazionale existed, just like they forgot that Berlusconi won a lot of Northern working class areas in 1994, and so on and so on...

[Хahar 🤔]

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...

This is because so-called "pundits" have the memory of goldfish and have already forgotten that Renzi's PD last time managed some amazing feats like doing better in Parioli than Testaccio (crying) or being above average in the Bergamo province (wtf), just like they forgot everything about the pre-2018 M5S vote, just like they forgot that Alleanza Nazionale existed, just like they forgot that Berlusconi won a lot of Northern working class areas in 1994, and so on and so on...

Look at this guy in denial that global trends are real! When are you going to join the rest of us in reality?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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...

This is because so-called "pundits" have the memory of goldfish and have already forgotten that Renzi's PD last time managed some amazing feats like doing better in Parioli than Testaccio (crying) or being above average in the Bergamo province (wtf), just like they forgot everything about the pre-2018 M5S vote, just like they forgot that Alleanza Nazionale existed, just like they forgot that Berlusconi won a lot of Northern working class areas in 1994, and so on and so on...

Look at this guy in denial that global trends are real! When are you going to join the rest of us in reality?

When Moncrieff votes Labor of course (paging discovolante et al).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

Though as the fundamental issue there is a broad 'underperformance' with wealthy pensioners - Italy's lack of a strong 'Tory' tradition has had curious electoral consequences since the financial crisis ended forever Berlusconi's characteristically brash and brazen ability to appeal to the crassest of crass bourgeois self-interest - on closer inspection that one turns out to be rather less about #trendz than it looks at first.

[JimJamUK]

I think this sort of true and also sort of not true. When looking at PD exclusively, their coalition, as Al said, looks a little less weird than last time, but this is largely because they lost some of their wealthiest supporters to the Third Pole, and re-gained some more working-class ones in certain regions (notably Liguria) from M5S. That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

Its non-traditional for most Western European countries, but for Italy its not radically different to what has long been the case. I mean, its not like the PD have ever profiled themselves on their commitment to the proletarian cause...

[Antonio the Sixth]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

M5S is the least leftist party in Italy, if we assess these things cladistically, which we shouldn't. Jao

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there.

Though Italian social geography is so different to what is normal north of the Alps, that even this is a false friend. All of this is one reason why Italian elections - even when deeply depressing horror shows like this one - are so endlessly fascinating: what you see at first is not what that's actually there.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

M5S is the least leftist party in Italy, if we assess these things cladistically, which we shouldn't. Jao

1. You stole my joke and 2. You didn't even explain it for laymen. I am very disappointed in you Nathan. Jao

[Person Man]

Again. Humor me as the ignorant but curious person here but what will this likely mean? What’s on the table? Do we have enough information to determine what they are going do?

We don't, no. We can safely assume she'll do some pretty heinous stuff, but speculating on what exactly is a fool's errand. Meloni is very right-wing, but she's also shown a lot of pragmatism and seems to be going out of her way to reassure the EU, so in terms of social policy she will probably choose her battlefields carefully.

Also, most of the stuff you cited are very America-specific issues that aren't even discussed in Italy at all. The Italian right bears some similarity with the US right, but not nearly that much.

When does Meloni take over? I remember it took like three months to decide on Conte after 2018 but with such as big win it might be different?

It shouldn't take nearly as long, unless the rift with Salvini gets a lot worse than it looks right now. The right-wing parties have already agreed to govern together long before the elections, so all that's left to do now is hash out the details of who gets what. By contrast, M5S and Lega were starting from scratch in 2018 and needed time to feel each other out on pretty much everything.

One symbolic but important thing to consider is that we're coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the March on Rome, on October 28. Meloni will probably want to be all set up at least a week before that, so as to avoid any unfortunate parallels.

Thanks for humoring me. Looks like there is going to be some "exciting events" out of Italy, if you use jaichiand's parlance.

[Andrea]

When does Meloni take over? I remember it took like three months to decide on Conte after 2018 but with such as big win it might be different?

New Parliament will meet first time on October 13th. They have to elect the presidents of both chambers. Third ballot (usually the next day) will require just absolute majority.
Then when both presidents are elected, Mattarella can start meeting parliamentary groups. Then he will given the assignment to Meloni. Should be pretty fast given the majorities are clear.

[Alcibiades]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

Sorry, I think I worded the bit you quoted badly. I do basically agree with everything you and Al said in your replies, and I especially agree that it’s very important to understand that Italy is to a large extent sui generis in its politics as far as European countries are concerned. I suppose to qualify, the “centre-right” in Italy more-or-less doesn’t exist anymore (or rather it’s been amalgamated into the radical right; and you could say it hasn’t existed for a long time seeing as Berlusconi is very much not a traditional moderate conservative politician … and then of course the DC was not a centre-right party in the conventional sense either …), and it’s not like parties as extreme as FdI and Lega do well with the educated upper middle classes anywhere in Europe really (with the possible exception of Spain).

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

M5S is the least leftist party in Italy, if we assess these things cladistically, which we shouldn't. Jao

1. You stole my joke and 2. You didn't even explain it for laymen. I am very disappointed in you Nathan. Jao

1. I did. I apologize. Mea maxima culpa.
2. PSI->PCI->current center-left coalition. PSI->PNF->MSI->AN->FdI. FI was founded by Craxiworld people. Lega in its original MUH PADANIA incarnation absorbed a lot of local PSI functionaries in Lombardy and Veneto as well. The THIRD POLE mostly split from either FI (Craxiworld) or the center-left coalition (commies). That leaves M5S and arguably +Eu (but then, radicalism was left-wing in the nineteenth century) as the only non-left forces of significance in Italy. Sinistrisme forever!

[The Free North]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

Its also worth nothing that the entire south of the country is (mostly) devoid of immigrants. While the arrive in the south, they all move north for work, etc. A huge calling card of the right is cut off at its knees in part due to the South's long history of economic malaise.

[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.

[Skill and Chance]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

Well, the big complication in Italy is M5S and whether it should really be considered Left or Other.  Imagine the US had the Andrew Yang UBI Party randomly winning a bunch of House and Senate seats in Appalachia while in the rest of the country, wealthy suburbs still swung to Biden and working class areas swung to Trump.  It seems more likely to me that M5S prevented an FdI landslide than prevented the left coalition from winning narrowly. 

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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.

I know you said oversimplified, but I just want to point out for clarity that the PLI vote in the South entirely collapsed in the 1950s - with a couple of seemingly random exceptions of course - and that the PSI definitely retained much of its working class base as well during Craxismo (this may, uh, turn interesting in 1994).

[Skill and Chance]

Again. Humor me as the ignorant but curious person here but what will this likely mean? What’s on the table? Do we have enough information to determine what they are going do?

We don't, no. We can safely assume she'll do some pretty heinous stuff, but speculating on what exactly is a fool's errand. Meloni is very right-wing, but she's also shown a lot of pragmatism and seems to be going out of her way to reassure the EU, so in terms of social policy she will probably choose her battlefields carefully.

Also, most of the stuff you cited are very America-specific issues that aren't even discussed in Italy at all. The Italian right bears some similarity with the US right, but not nearly that much.

When does Meloni take over? I remember it took like three months to decide on Conte after 2018 but with such as big win it might be different?

It shouldn't take nearly as long, unless the rift with Salvini gets a lot worse than it looks right now. The right-wing parties have already agreed to govern together long before the elections, so all that's left to do now is hash out the details of who gets what. By contrast, M5S and Lega were starting from scratch in 2018 and needed time to feel each other out on pretty much everything.

One symbolic but important thing to consider is that we're coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the March on Rome, on October 28. Meloni will probably want to be all set up at least a week before that, so as to avoid any unfortunate parallels.

Thanks for humoring me. Looks like there is going to be some "exciting events" out of Italy, if you use jaichiand's parlance.

Well, we know she questions gay adoption rights and that a regional government her party won control over in 2020 imposed a 7 week limit on abortion.  Something resembling the DeSantis/Youngkin LGBT educational policies also seems pretty likely to happen.  They also want pretty serious immigration restrictions and appear to oppose laws designed to give any special workplace protections to women. 

On the other hand, her party appears to be more moderate than I would have expected on climate change, i.e. they believe there is a meaningful role for government to play in containing it and fighting pollution in general.  Maybe this is just an American bias, though, because a national right wing leader saying the government should be involved in regulating CO2 at all would be unusual here.  I think the Western European right pretty commonly agrees to CO2 regulation.  They are apparently big on nuclear as the solution.

While Italy has its own deep traditions, the social conservatism here really does look equivalent to a US Southern state or Republican presidential nominee, which has been really rare in Western Europe in the last couple of generations (indeed, most of Western Europe absolutely freaked out about it in Poland, etc.).

[Antonio the Sixth]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

Well, the big complication in Italy is M5S and whether it should really be considered Left or Other.  Imagine the US had the Andrew Yang UBI Party randomly winning a bunch of House and Senate seats in Appalachia while in the rest of the country, wealthy suburbs still swung to Biden and working class areas swung to Trump.  It seems more likely to me that M5S prevented an FdI landslide than prevented the left coalition from winning narrowly. 

Yeah, I don't disagree. My point is not to say that M5S should be considered as part of "the left" as such (arguably, the key to their success was precisely that they came to embody left-wing policies without being seen as part of "the left"). My point is that they're hard to square off with the totalizing "trendz" narrative either way because they're not part of either block. Whatever they may have in common with the left, they have far less in common with the right. So there's not really a coherent political force representing the "losers" of globalization across Italy the way you could at least argue there is in many European countries, and again, that will have implication for how political conflict organizes in the coming years.

Ultimately, almost all political systems (the only exception would be those with an explicitly "consociative" political structure like Switzerland) trend toward some form of bipolarism. There's always a government and an opposition, after all. Italy has been in an awkward tripolar spot since 2013, one that seemed untenable for a long time but somehow hung on. I think finally having a strong government with a coherent ideological agenda is what is needed to finally collapse it back into bipolarism. How that happens remains a huge question, as something will have to give in order to resolve the tensions between PD, M5S and Calenda's clowns. So you could think of many scenarios where it does collapse into a muh trendz type of political divides - but you can also think of plenty where it becomes something completely different. One fact that contributes to that is the fact that the social contradictions between North-Center and South have considerably increased in the past decade, not decreased. Given that, it's not surprising that they've diverged so much politically, and it's hard to see this divide disappear anytime soon.