Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Mike88]

Meloni seems to be becoming like your average Premier who promisses a lot of "change" but then... nothing. Actually nothing, neither radical or moderate, just managing daily affairs.

There are in fact some relatively substantive reforms underway. However, instead of being about the kitchen-table concerns Italians have in their daily lives (and that drove Meloni to power in the first place) they are about the longstanding ideological obsessions of the right. One is judicial reform, always in the direction of sticking it to the judges/prosecutors who are accused of being too hard on politicians (and to be fair there is also a lot of corruption in the Italian judiciary, though not more than in other branches of government). The other is the law on "regional autonomy", which promises to let regions keep a higher share of their tax revenue. Of course that's good news for wealthy regions like the right-wing bastions of Lombardy and Veneto, and less good news for the South which is a lot more dependent on state support. So Meloni is definitely getting busy in government - but her priorities aren't exactly those of ordinary Italians.

Sure, but it's nothing surprising. The justice reform thing you point out, and the criticisms of judges going "after" politicians, is a bit "whatever" in Southern Europe, as those who are in power, and have a lot of investigations around them, try to "paint" a negative image of the justice system. And the regions tax reform, is also similar to other countries, my own for example.

My earlier point is actually summarized by your last remark, she's just managing things in order to remain in power, just like other Premiers, and not tackling the main issues affecting Italy's society and economy.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I had missed this but the Democratic Party has moved its primary by one week, so the vote will be on the 26th of February.

The four candidates...

Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilia-Romagna. Notable things about him: on the more moderate liberal wing of the party, won re-election by a bigger margin than expected in 2020, has been supportive of increased regional autonomy, wants the M5S to eat sh**t.
Elly Schlein, vicepresident of Emilia-Romagna (yes really) until her election to Parliament last September. Notable things about her: very progressive, bisexual, Jewish, also a Swiss and a US citizen, left the PD in 2015 because she considered Renzi too right-wing before rejoining recently.
Paola De Micheli, Deputy. Notable things about her: blank stare well she was the vice-secretary under Zingaretti and the Minister of Transport during Conte II I guess. And she is also from Emilia-Romagna!
Gianni Cuperlo, Deputy. Notable things about him: aside from being the only non-Emilian in the race, being a complete blast from the past (he ran for this post in 2014 and not quite as a fresh new face). I am half convinced his candidacy is a deliberate meme.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Meloni seems to be becoming like your average Premier who promisses a lot of "change" but then... nothing. Actually nothing, neither radical or moderate, just managing daily affairs.

There are in fact some relatively substantive reforms underway. However, instead of being about the kitchen-table concerns Italians have in their daily lives (and that drove Meloni to power in the first place) they are about the longstanding ideological obsessions of the right. One is judicial reform, always in the direction of sticking it to the judges/prosecutors who are accused of being too hard on politicians (and to be fair there is also a lot of corruption in the Italian judiciary, though not more than in other branches of government). The other is the law on "regional autonomy", which promises to let regions keep a higher share of their tax revenue. Of course that's good news for wealthy regions like the right-wing bastions of Lombardy and Veneto, and less good news for the South which is a lot more dependent on state support. So Meloni is definitely getting busy in government - but her priorities aren't exactly those of ordinary Italians.

Sure, but it's nothing surprising. The justice reform thing you point out, and the criticisms of judges going "after" politicians, is a bit "whatever" in Southern Europe, as those who are in power, and have a lot of investigations around them, try to "paint" a negative image of the justice system. And the regions tax reform, is also similar to other countries, my own for example.

My earlier point is actually summarized by your last remark, she's just managing things in order to remain in power, just like other Premiers, and not tackling the main issues affecting Italy's society and economy.

I would say that the law on regional autonomy is a significant measure addressing one of the main issue affecting our society and economy actually... just one that goes in the wrong direction.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Today was finally the (first) day of the Lazio and Lombardy regional elections. Turnout was rather low, around 32% in Lombardy and 29% in Lazio - we'll see how much it will increase tomorrow. If it got up to 50% or so it would be pretty normal accounting for the elections being standalone events at a fairly random time of the year, although still way down from 2018 when the regionals coincided with the parliamentary vote. However I find that figure unlikely.

Later I need to talk about the regional election in Molise as well, which is bound to happen within the spring and may get exciting since a recent poll suggests that incumbent president Donato Toma (Forza Italia) is horridly unpopular. He only narrowly beat his M5S challenger five years ago.

[MRCVzla]

Polls are closed, according exit polls, Centre-right gains Lazio and retains Lombardia.
Opinio (Noto/EMG/Piepoli) for Rai / Quorum/YouTrend for SkyTG24 / Tecnè for Mediaset:
LOMBARDIA
Attilio Fontana (CDX, inc) 49.5-53.5% / 48-52% / 49-53%
Pierfrancesco Majorino (CSX) 33-37% / 32-36% / 33-37%
Letizia Moratti (Centre) 9.5-13.5% / 12-16% / 10-14%
Mara Ghidorzi (UP) 1-3% / 1-3%

LAZIO
Francesco Rocca (CDX) 50.5-54.5% / 48-52% / 50-54%
Alessio D'Amato (CSX) 30-34% / 29-33% / 31-35%
Donatella Bianchi (M5S) 10.5-14.5% / 14-18% / 10.5-14.5%
Rosa Rinaldi (UP) 1-3% / 1-3%

Turnout in Lazio is around 45-46%, in Lombardia around 41-42%, of course a downfall respect to 2018, where both regional elections were hold in the same date of the general elections.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Thanks to MRCVzla for updating with the preliminary results. I find curious that turnout was higher in Lombardy yesterday but will end up higher in Lazio overall. I don't even think weather was bad in Lombardy this morning so it's strange.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Issuing correction on the previous post of mine: the initial turnout reports that were based on a smaller number of municipalities were wrong, and it seems that actually turnout was 37% in Lazio compared to 41% in Lombardy. Sigh.

[MRCVzla]

Effectively, 41.7% in Lombardia (73.1% in 2018) and 37.2% in Lazio (66.6% in 2018), the latter is the lowest turnout EVER in a regional election (the former record was from Emilia-Romagna 2014 with 37.7%)

Apart from CDX winning both races, the other headline would be in the party list votes, specially in Lombardia as like in the past September general election, pollsters projections FdI becomes the most voted party within Cdx outrating Lega (FdI 23-26%/Lega 15-16%/FI 7%/Fontana civic list 6-7%)

Official election results page from the Internal Affairs Ministry: https://elezioni.interno.gov.it/regionali/scrutini/20230212/scrutiniRI

[jaichind]

I just realized that in Lombardia M5S joined the Center-Left list.  It did not seem to do them much good and instead gave space to the Centrist list to get some votes.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I just realized that in Lombardia M5S joined the Center-Left list.  It did not seem to do them much good and instead gave space to the Centrist list to get some votes.

Letizia Moratti (and her lists more so) is slightly underperforming the result of Azione-Italia Viva at the parliamentary election and doing much worse than the polls suggested. What are you talking about?

[jaichind]

I just realized that in Lombardia M5S joined the Center-Left list.  It did not seem to do them much good and instead gave space to the Centrist list to get some votes.

Letizia Moratti (and her lists more so) is slightly underperforming the result of Azione-Italia Viva at the parliamentary election and doing much worse than the polls suggested. What are you talking about?

I am sure they match pre-election polls.  My comment was more about in comparison to the 2018 result.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I just realized that in Lombardia M5S joined the Center-Left list.  It did not seem to do them much good and instead gave space to the Centrist list to get some votes.

Letizia Moratti (and her lists more so) is slightly underperforming the result of Azione-Italia Viva at the parliamentary election and doing much worse than the polls suggested. What are you talking about?

I am sure they match pre-election polls.  My comment was more about in comparison to the 2018 result.

The M5S was going to do a lot worse than 2018 in any case for the simple reason that it is much less popular overall than it used to be at its peak so I wouldn't make much of that comparison. I think you're just looking at general trends that have little to do with the specifics of Lombardy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fash Girl Winter is still going strong, it seems. Still waiting for a Dream of Spring.

[Cassius]

I had missed this but the Democratic Party has moved its primary by one week, so the vote will be on the 26th of February.

The four candidates...

Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilia-Romagna. Notable things about him: on the more moderate liberal wing of the party, won re-election by a bigger margin than expected in 2020, has been supportive of increased regional autonomy, wants the M5S to eat sh**t.
Elly Schlein, vicepresident of Emilia-Romagna (yes really) until her election to Parliament last September. Notable things about her: very progressive, bisexual, Jewish, also a Swiss and a US citizen, left the PD in 2015 because she considered Renzi too right-wing before rejoining recently.
Paola De Micheli, Deputy. Notable things about her: blank stare well she was the vice-secretary under Zingaretti and the Minister of Transport during Conte II I guess. And she is also from Emilia-Romagna!
Gianni Cuperlo, Deputy. Notable things about him: aside from being the only non-Emilian in the race, being a complete blast from the past (he ran for this post in 2014 and not quite as a fresh new face). I am half convinced his candidacy is a deliberate meme.

Gianni Cuperlo looks like what you would get if you bred a stereotypical boring Italian centre-left politician in a lab.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I had missed this but the Democratic Party has moved its primary by one week, so the vote will be on the 26th of February.

The four candidates...

Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilia-Romagna. Notable things about him: on the more moderate liberal wing of the party, won re-election by a bigger margin than expected in 2020, has been supportive of increased regional autonomy, wants the M5S to eat sh**t.
Elly Schlein, vicepresident of Emilia-Romagna (yes really) until her election to Parliament last September. Notable things about her: very progressive, bisexual, Jewish, also a Swiss and a US citizen, left the PD in 2015 because she considered Renzi too right-wing before rejoining recently.
Paola De Micheli, Deputy. Notable things about her: blank stare well she was the vice-secretary under Zingaretti and the Minister of Transport during Conte II I guess. And she is also from Emilia-Romagna!
Gianni Cuperlo, Deputy. Notable things about him: aside from being the only non-Emilian in the race, being a complete blast from the past (he ran for this post in 2014 and not quite as a fresh new face). I am half convinced his candidacy is a deliberate meme.

Gianni Cuperlo looks like what you would get if you bred a stereotypical boring Italian centre-left politician in a lab.

That's more or less what he is. But again, I don't think he took himself very seriously this year.

[Mike88]

Almost final results:

Lombardia, 9,227/9,254 counted:

54.7% Attilio Fontana (FdI, Lega, FI)
33.9% Pierfrancesco Majorino (PD, M5S, AVS)
  9.9% Letizia Moratti (A–IV)
  1.5% Mara Ghidorzi (UP)

41.7% Turnout (-31.4)

Lazio, 5,216/5,306 counted:

53.8% Francesco Rocca (FdI, Lega, FI)
33.6% Alessio D'Amato (PD, A–IV, AVS, +Eu)
10.8% Donatella Bianchi (M5S)
  1.0% Sonia Pecorilli (PCI)
  0.9% Rosa Rinaldi (UP)

37.2% Turnout (-29.4)

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

A fun detail: Fontana's margin of victory was pretty much identical to 2018. Of course he went up against somewhat different coalitions each time, but one can use this as a baseline for interesting comparisons. Fontana's margin decreased most substantially in the metropolitan city of Milan, but it also went down in the neighbouring provinces of Lodi and Monza and strangely enough also Sondrio (the most rural and right-wing of all); it increased in all other provinces. It also generally decreased in larger cities and towns, while he made up ground elsewhere. Quite a few suburbs of Milan "flipped" and so did Brescia, where the candidacy of incumbent mayor Emilio Del Bono boosted the PD so hard it got more raw votes than either 2018 or 2022 despite the drastic decline in turnout.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I had missed this but the Democratic Party has moved its primary by one week, so the vote will be on the 26th of February.

The four candidates...

Elly Schlein, vicepresident of Emilia-Romagna (yes really) until her election to Parliament last September. Notable things about her: very progressive, bisexual, Jewish, also a Swiss and a US citizen, left the PD in 2015 because she considered Renzi too right-wing before rejoining recently

We're reaching unfathomably high levels of based here.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I had missed this but the Democratic Party has moved its primary by one week, so the vote will be on the 26th of February.

The four candidates...

Elly Schlein, vicepresident of Emilia-Romagna (yes really) until her election to Parliament last September. Notable things about her: very progressive, bisexual, Jewish, also a Swiss and a US citizen, left the PD in 2015 because she considered Renzi too right-wing before rejoining recently

We're reaching unfathomably high levels of based here.

I don't think she'd be up your alley, she's never said anything about kids named Ahmed in Bologna.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Now that we're in times of elections again (the regionals in Lombardy and Lazio, then the PD primaries) I have finally gotten around to making maps.

First off, I have completed Al's last series with the only remaining party that crossed the threshold (AVS). All credit for the base map goes to him of course.



Not terribly surprising geography for a radical green-left party, and largely resembling PD but with more distinct urban peaks. But also a ridiculously strong result in Sardinia for some reason.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

And now something I had promised a while ago...

I will likely do a swing map from 2018 soon (and then at some point in the indefinite future swing maps at a more detailed level, but that will take much more time).

The Right improved everywhere, with weaker swings largely in constituencies anchored by large cities (Turin, Milan, and also Naples but with very different dynamics at play) and its strongest swings in the area of the country where Centre and South meet. The latter coincides with some historical MSI/AN strongholds like much of Lazio and the province of L'Aquila, but in general this funny map is quite similar to the pattern of movement from the M5S to Lega in 2019 - though the bulk of these voters further migrated to Brothers of Italy by 2022 of course.

The second best swing for the Right happened in Basilicata, which does not fit the trend I just described and could be explained away as a small Southern region doing random things, but since for whatever reason Basilicata became a centre-left stronghold in the Berlusconi era and even in 2018 it had the second worst result for the Right close behind Campania 1, it feels significant. Realignment?




Weird map which does show evidence of a stronger recovery in areas that 'should' vote to the left (Liguria, Campania vs. everything north of the Po) but also looks bizarre in various places. The weak result in Tuscany stands out, but even more so does Umbria registering the only decrease as it keeps trending rightwards at West Virginia speed. In a straight CDX vs CSX comparison it actually voted slightly "to the right of the country", which is quite shocking.




For obvious reasons this looks a lot like a mirror image of the Right's map. Seen from another point of view however it also resembles a mirror image of the Five Star Movement's pattern of support in 2013/2014, before it became a Southern-centric party. Places where the M5S was pretty strong in 2013 but much less so in 2022 include the central Adriatic coast, much of Veneto, parts of Lazio and western Liguria... a group that is fairly diverse but keeps reminding me of a certain French party's performance in certain coastal regions.

The abnormally high decline in Sicilia 2 is of course a reminder of the epic result by Sud Chiama Nord. If you're interested in what's happened of them, their Deputy Francesco Gallo sits in the mixed group while their Senator Dafne Musolino joined the Autonomist group, together with the SVP and a bunch of life Senators.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Let's go in detail with the party swings within the Right.



Obviously the Fratelli d'Italia swing map is very similar to the map of overall support, given how comparatively low their 2018 result was. A breakthrough with the Lega electorate in Lombardy and Veneto and a 'return home' of what had been an AN stronghold in Lazio can be seen.




As noted, much of the traditonal Lega base deserted to Fratelli d'Italia. The decline gets smaller further south where the party was weaker to begin with, and hilariously enough it turns into a small increase in parts of the Mezzogiorno, of course areas where the party was basically inexistent before the late 2010's.




Quite a ridiculous map. The final death of the berlusconista heartland in Lombardy is on display, as is a fairly strong in Liguria that must correspond to a higher-than-elsewhere number of centre-right voters opting for Noi Moderati, the list led by Giovanni Toti. Comparatively small drops in the Marche, Abruzzo and Basilicata are surely part of why the coalition as a whole gained so much in those regions. But overall it's hard to make sense of this.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Similarly we can look at party swings on the left.



Obviously what has been said for the coalition still applies to the party that dominates it, just shifted down somewhat. A fairly obvious contrast between places where the flow from PD to A/IV was stronger and those where the flow from M5S to PD was stronger. The slump in Umbria was almost a full four percentage points.




For reasons I don't entirely understand More Europe became a more broad-based buttress for the PD at this election, registering small improvements all across the country, often in places that are everything but a fertile ground for a left-liberal niche party, while deflating significantly in its metropolitan downtown strongholds (a movement large enough to be seen at the circoscrizione level around Turin, Milan and Rome). Once again, a pattern that had already happened at the 2019 European election.

---

I could do a virtual swing map comparing AVS with LeU as well but I am not sure. I'll accept feedback.

[MRCVzla]

Today was the last stage of the PD leadership primary (the popular vote primary) between Emilia-Romagna presidente Stefano Bonaccini (representing the liberal wing) and his former deputy and now MP Elly Schlein (from the left-wing). First extraofficial data says Schlein leading (mostly data comes from the North and the cities) but they are now reports of Bonaccini having a landslide in the South. Stay tuned. Anyway the projections says they will be the lowest turnout for a PD primary ever (around 1.2 million votes).

Also yesterday was the party congress of the social-liberal +Europa (who was close to the 3% threshold to get full PR seats in the past September general election), in a pact between internal factions, 1 of the 2 MPs of the party, the radical Riccardo Magi is the new General Secretary (aka, the leader) while former Parma mayor Federico Pizzarotti becames the new President of the party. The direction of +Europa now is being close to the "third pole" of Azione/Italia Viva in order to get a sole "Renew Europe" joint list for next year' European elections (the test for the united "third pole" list will be in the upcoming Friuli-Venezia Giulia regional elections, later this year)

[Keep Calm and ...]

Elly Schlein is the projected winner (by Bidimedia)

https://twitter.com/SBidimedia/status/1629946759211364352