Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

How the Presidential race shaping up?

This is a difficult question to answer because it is not a popular election and often Presidential elections start with parties being very far from anything like an agreement. Having said that there are a few things we know.

Mario Draghi is considered the most plausible candidate, but it is unclear how willing he would be to leave his post as head of government. There is some support for the proposal of re-electing Mattarella in a similar fashion to Napolitano in 2013, although Mattarella is officially uninterested. Another non-partisan name that is often mentioned is Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia - who would be the first female President of the Republic. Various partisan figures are in the mix too - for instance it is no secret that many on the right would love to elect Berlusconi - but I doubt any would get the trasversal support that is needed to win.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Since Italian law - in what I realize tends to appear very silly to foreigners - prohibits to publish electoral polls less than a fortnight before an election, we will not have any more of them for this year's local elections, so I think it is time for a final update on that.

First now that I have covered all the big cities I'd like to talk a bit about those in the following tier by size (all over 100,000 people).
In Salerno incumbent PD mayor Vincenzo Napoli - a close ally of his predecessor and current regional president Vincenzo De Luca - was elected in an epic landslide of 70% in the first round five years ago and looks poised to win re-election very easily against both the centre-right and the Five Stars.
In Ravenna incumbent PD mayor Michele De Pascale was elected narrowly in 2016 but this year is running with the support of M5S and against a divided right, so I consider him a strong favourite even with a lack of public polls (the city is also quite historically leftist - although most notable for having been a PRI stronghold).
In nearby Rimini the PD incumbent is term-limited; the centre-left candidate and member of the current administration Jamil Sadegholvaad, notable for being half Iranian, should have the upper hand against the centre-right candidate and the M5S one.
In Latina incumbent Damiano Coletta was elected in 2016 as an independent in strange circumstances - got into a runoff with a hard-right candidate as both of them narrowly edged the PD one while a more moderate rightist for FI got a distant fourth, scooped up literally all the vote that was up for grabs in the second round and won with an unbelievable 75% - even stranger since Latina is historically a very rightist city (including sizable fascist sympathies). This time Coletta is running with the support of the Democratic Party, but against a unified centre-right again and with M5S and Azione/+E running separately - just like in Rome hilariously - his reelection is far from certain.

About the elections I had already talked about the last polls did not show nothing new for the most part, except that Sala has developed a much stronger lead and a Gaultieri-Michetti Rome runoff is ever more likely. I also suspect that there will be many recriminations in the centre-left about De Magistris splitting the vote in Calabria, because Occhiuto winning with a plurality while both of the other major candidates take solid chunks is more than probable.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Today is Election Day! Well, the first of the two election days. I am sure I already mentioned this somewhere but either way it's useful to repeat - the polls are open from 7 to 23 today and from 7 to 15 tomorrow.

The turnout is reported to be 13.7% at noon, which seems a bit weak but nothing too bad. Obviously don't expect reports on much of anything else today, but results should come out fairly quickly in the afternoon and evening tomorrow - although most of the important races will likely be decided in the runoff two weeks from now.

[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.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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.

During the First Republic the voting system in the Senate was on a theoretical level based on single-member constituencies (approximately two hundreds of then if I recall correctly) with a proportional retrieve of the losers to make up the rest, although the threshold to be elected with the former system was an all but impossible 65% and so in practice it was fully proportional. Still, this meant that there tended to be fewer parties running, that it was easier to find parties forming lists together, and presumably that there was more personal vote. This should be the most significant difference together with the different voting age and randomness.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

In other news, turnout at 23 at the end of yesterday was 41.7% which is again weak, although the facile comparison to the much higher one in 2016 - that is the last time most of these municipalities had had local elections - is flawed given that there was only one voting day that year.

Interestingly turnout is lower than average in the big cities - and also much lower in the Calabria regional, but that's par for the course with the middling numbers of 2020 and 2014.

Speaking of which I somehow had completely missed that former regional president Mario Oliverio made a last-minute entrance in the race and is the fourth and last candidate. I doubt he is getting much support but I have to wonder why the Calabrian centre-left is so keen on vote splitting and self-sabotaging.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Speaking of which I somehow had completely missed that former regional president Mario Oliverio made a last-minute entrance in the race and is the fourth and last candidate. I doubt he is getting much support but I have to wonder why the Calabrian centre-left is so keen on vote splitting and self-sabotaging.

The center-left is a joke political bloc, and Calabria is a joke region, so that means the Calabrian center-left is a joke squared.

Anyway, God I hope turnout is robust today. It'd be truly pitiful if we couldn't even break 50%.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Speaking of which I somehow had completely missed that former regional president Mario Oliverio made a last-minute entrance in the race and is the fourth and last candidate. I doubt he is getting much support but I have to wonder why the Calabrian centre-left is so keen on vote splitting and self-sabotaging.

The center-left is a joke political bloc, and Calabria is a joke region, so that means the Calabrian center-left is a joke squared.

Anyway, God I hope turnout is robust today. It'd be truly pitiful if we couldn't even break 50%.

I mean Mario Oliverio won with 61% of the vote in 2014 so this sounds a bit excessive. Although we all know that 2014 was almost literally worlds apart from today. Thanks, Renzi!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Speaking of which I somehow had completely missed that former regional president Mario Oliverio made a last-minute entrance in the race and is the fourth and last candidate. I doubt he is getting much support but I have to wonder why the Calabrian centre-left is so keen on vote splitting and self-sabotaging.

The center-left is a joke political bloc, and Calabria is a joke region, so that means the Calabrian center-left is a joke squared.

Anyway, God I hope turnout is robust today. It'd be truly pitiful if we couldn't even break 50%.

I mean Mario Oliverio won with 61% of the vote in 2014 so this sounds a bit excessive. Although we all know that 2014 was almost literally worlds apart from today. Thanks, Renzi!

I'm not saying the Calabrian center-left can't win. This is Italy, being a joke and winning elections are far from mutually exclusive.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Speaking of which I somehow had completely missed that former regional president Mario Oliverio made a last-minute entrance in the race and is the fourth and last candidate. I doubt he is getting much support but I have to wonder why the Calabrian centre-left is so keen on vote splitting and self-sabotaging.

The center-left is a joke political bloc, and Calabria is a joke region, so that means the Calabrian center-left is a joke squared.

Anyway, God I hope turnout is robust today. It'd be truly pitiful if we couldn't even break 50%.

I mean Mario Oliverio won with 61% of the vote in 2014 so this sounds a bit excessive. Although we all know that 2014 was almost literally worlds apart from today. Thanks, Renzi!

I'm not saying the Calabrian center-left can't win. This is Italy, being a joke and winning elections are far from mutually exclusive.

I'll bite the bullet then: in Italy being a joke is a pre-requisite to win elections.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The polls have closed and we have the first projections.

Left-wing candidates are on track to win outright in Bologna, Milan, and Naples (not sure if anyone was expecting that!). Torino and Rome will have classic left vs right runoffs (with the left-wing candidate ahead in Torino, and the right-wing one ahead in Rome but most of the outstanding votes are left-leaning). In Calabria the right is winning easily, and De Magistris is doing almost as well as Bruni.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Runoff in Trieste too, this one with the right-wing incumbent pretty favored though (he's in the mid-40s with the left-winger in the mid-30s).

[Antonio the Sixth]

OK so the projections are changing a lot. No idea what to make of it, but the newest SWG projection has Gualtieri and Raggi tied for second in Rome. The left's margin of victory has also come down a bit in Bologna, while the right is doing much better in Calabria.

It's starting to look like the exit polls were seriously off.

[Andrea]

It's starting to look like the exit polls were seriously off.

Where is the news? :-)
 
The early projections for Rome are different between La7 and Mediaset at the moment. Mediaset have Michetti 29 Gualtieri 26 Raggi 20

[jeron]

The polls have closed and we have the first projections.

Left-wing candidates are on track to win outright in Bologna, Milan, and Naples (not sure if anyone was expecting that!).

Naples has had a leftist mayor for more than 40 years and the leftist parties rallied around Manfredi, so it is probably not that much of a surprise

[Antonio the Sixth]

The polls have closed and we have the first projections.

Left-wing candidates are on track to win outright in Bologna, Milan, and Naples (not sure if anyone was expecting that!).

Naples has had a leftist mayor for more than 40 years and the leftist parties rallied around Manfredi, so it is probably not that much of a surprise

True, and apparently the polls did show it was a possibility. I guess I was assuming a bit of reversion to the mean from Naples, since it's not really left-wing at the national level. But the PD-M5S union worked wonders there.

Anyway, Rome is... weird. All the projections now have Gualtieri ahead of Raggi (24% to 21% in the SWG one now), but still quite an underperformance given how strong the left is everywhere else.

[Andrea]

191 polling stations out of 292

Siena parliamentary by-election

Letta 49.34%
Centre-right 39.36%

[Antonio the Sixth]

191 polling stations out of 192

Siena parliamentary by-election

Letta 49.34%
Centre-right 39.36%

That doesn't seem like a great result, honestly.

[Andrea]

I had a typo. it is 191 out of 292 polling stations for Siena by-election.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Anyway, Rome is... weird. All the projections now have Gualtieri ahead of Raggi (24% to 21% in the SWG one now), but still quite an underperformance given how strong the left is everywhere else.

Well if you consider for one Calenda's presence and his likely strong appeal to the kind of rich educated demographic that has trended left recently, secondly that an incumbent M5S candidate in a place like Rome is bound to do better than a non-incumbent one somewhere up North like Turin or Milan, it was never surprising that Gualtieri's absolute result would be comparatively weak. Although I can concede he appears to be doing somewhat worse than expected.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Anyway, Rome is... weird. All the projections now have Gualtieri ahead of Raggi (24% to 21% in the SWG one now), but still quite an underperformance given how strong the left is everywhere else.

Well if you consider for one Calenda's presence and his likely strong appeal to the kind of rich educated demographic that has trended left recently, secondly that an incumbent M5S candidate in a place like Rome is bound to do better than a non-incumbent one somewhere up North like Turin or Milan, it was never surprising that Gualtieri's absolute result would be comparatively weak. Although I can concede he appears to be doing somewhat worse than expected.

Yeah, it makes sense, but still disappointing.

I have to hope Gualtieri is still favored in the runoff, though. He should get a clear majority of Raggi voters and hopefully most Calenda voters as well.

[Antonio the Sixth]

New SWG projection has Michetti at 31%, Gualtieri 26%, Raggi 20%. Starting to look somewhere halfway between the exit polls and the early SWG projection. Here's hoping the gap narrows a little more in the next updates.

[Andrea]

Tuscany #12 (Siena and some bits of Arezzo province) parliamentary by-election

Final result

Enrico Letta 49.92%
Lega+Brothers of Italia+Forza Italia - UDC 37.83%
Communist Party (fielding former MP and former MEP Marco Rizzo) 4.69%
Power to the People 2.95%
National Italian Movement 1.48%
Italexit 1.73%
3V (No Vax) 1.4%

Turnout 35.6%

[Andrea]

The good people of Morterone have spoken

https://elezioni.interno.gov.it/comunali/scrutini/20211003/scrutiniGI030980550

3 Cllrs for the Gay Party after polling 42% (which means 9 votes).

None of the elected Cllrs (of both lists) live there. The winning list was apparently registered some minutes after the actual deadline because "the electoral office was in Ballabio and it takes some time to reach it as it was not advertised that the clarks at Morterone would have not accepted the nominations there".

A legal challenge will follow.

[Mike88]

Why is the counting so slow in Rome? (And here I was, a week ago, criticizing Lisbon for the slow vote count )

Also, turnout seems really, really low, compared with the 57% in 2016.