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The Guardian - UK
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Lizzy Davies

Italy general election 2022: exit poll shows victory for far-right – as it happened

Giorgia Meloni Italy Brors of Italy
Italians wait in line to casts their ballots at a polling station in Rome.
Italians wait in line to casts their ballots at a polling station in Rome. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/Avalon

Main centre-left group concedes defeat

Just before we finish our live coverage for the night, Reuters has reported that Italy’s main centre-left group, the Democratic Party, has conceded defeat in the election, saying it would be the largest opposition force in the next parliament.

Read our full story here:

Leader of Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni poses with her ballot at a polling station.
Leader of Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni poses with her ballot at a polling station. Photograph: Yara Nardi/Reuters

In the 2018 election, her party, the Brothers of Italy, won just 4.3% of the vote. Four years later, Giorgia Meloni is set to become the country’s first female PM and her party set to win 22.5-26.5% of the vote, making it the most dominant party in Italy.

The Italian left, represented by the Partito Democratico, accused by its critics of having lost touch with the working class and the poor, can shoulder some of the blame for this stunning turnaround. Italy’s economic and political instability did the rest.

Meloni will now be in charge of steering Italy through one of its most delicate periods, dealing with challenges from the energy crisis and high inflation to a possible recession and a winter wave of Covid 19.

Her coalition seems at this point to have the numbers to rule for the next five years. But there are clear challenges within her coalition: her bedfellows, Matteo Salvini (currently on trial for alleged migrant kidnapping), and the scandal-plagued former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi come with complications.

Certainly, a new political chapter has just begun, the era of the far-right. And if Meloni has her way, it won’t stop at Italy.

Poland’s prime minister congratulates Meloni

The rightwing Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has extended his congratulations to Giorgia Meloni, as well as Viktor Orbán (see post here.)

The boost that a rightwing government, led by a far-right politician, in one of western Europe’s major countries, a G7 and Nato member, will give to these long-standing rightwing populist governments cannot be understated.

More soul-searching on the left.

Antonello Guerrera, the prolific UK correspondent for La Repubblica, has posted this Tweet. Attenzione, Keir Starmer.

Closing summary

We are going to wrap up this blog soon. Thanks to all who have stayed with us for these historic results.

  • Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, are predicted by exit polls to have won enough votes to give its rightwing alliance a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament.

  • If these results firm up, and we must be cautious until they do, Meloni will be the frontrunner for prime minister, the first woman in Italy’s history to occupy Palazzo Chigi.

  • With her own party in coalition with the far-right Lega of Matteo Salvini and the rightwing Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi, a Meloni-led government is likely to be the most rightwing Italy has had since the second world war.

  • Meloni’s likely victory has already brought congratulations from Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian fourth-term prime minister. He welcomed the arrival of “friends who share a common vision.”

  • The bloc led by the centre-left Partito Democratico is predicted by the exit poll to win 25.5%-29.5% of the vote. The Five Star Movement, which triggered the political crisis by withdrawing support from Mario Draghi’s government, is forecast to have won 13.5- 17.5%.

  • Turnout was 63.8%, the interior ministry said, about nine points down on the last election in 2018.

Hungary's Orbán congratulates far-right Meloni

Giorgia Meloni has been congratulated by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Balázs Orbán, Viktor Orbán’s political director and member of the Hungarian parliament, wrote on Twitter:

In these difficult times, we need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges.

Updated

The first projection – based on a proportion of actual votes cast- for the upper house is in. They give Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy 24.6% of the vote, with the centre-left Partito Democratico the second party with 19.4%.

The Five Star Movement are in third place, with 16.5%.

But, crucially for Meloni, her alliance partners, the far-right Lega and rightwing Forza Italia, pick up 8.5% and 8% respectively. Which gives their alliance the majority they need.

This is looking like a very good night for Meloni.

If you’re coming to the blog fresh, and are wanting to know more about Giorgia Meloni, the woman likely to become Italy’s first far-right prime minister since the second world war, take a look at this piece by the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida.

[MSI was the Italian Social Movement, formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini.]

She wrote in her biography, Io Sono Giorgia – I am Giorgia – that she was instinctively drawn to MSI’s youth movement, where she said she found solidarity in a close-knit, if marginalised, community of militants often depicted as evil or violent, who dedicated all their time to politics as opposed to frequenting discos or shopping like their peers.

As we reported earlier, Meloni rejects the idea that her politics are fascist, arguing that the Italian right consigned fascism to history decades ago. She has said there are no “nostalgic fascists, racists or antisemites in the Brothers of Italy DNA” and that she has always got rid of “ambiguous people”.

However, not everyone is convinced. Brothers of Italy has retained MSI’s tricoloured flame in its official logo and its headquarters is at the same address, on Via della Scrofa in central Rome, where MSI set up office in 1946.

In the summer, Meloni, whose party’s motto is “God, family and country”, travelled to Marbella where she expressed her hardline views on immigration and homosexuality during an aggressive speech at a rally held by her party’s Spanish far-right counterpart Vox. (You can watch that video here, too.)

Salvini: rightwing alliance has a "clear advantage"

Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, has posted his reaction on Twitter, declaring that his alliance has a “clear advantage” in both the upper and lower houses.

It’s going to be a long night, but I want to say THANK YOU

There will be much soul-searching for the Italian left in coming weeks if these exit poll results are confirmed. In fact, it’s already begun…

Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Italy correspondent, has filed a story based on those exit poll results, remarking:

If exit polls are correct, the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, is expected to hand Meloni a mandate to form a government that, if everything goes smoothly, could be in place by the end of October.

(Nothing happens particularly quickly in Italian politics.)

It is likely to be a government with some good friends among Europe’s rightwing populists, she adds.

The coalition’s expected victory, however, raises questions about the country’s alliances in Europe as the continent enters a winter likely to be dominated by high energy prices and its response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Meloni has sought to send reassuring messages, but the prospect of her as prime minister is unlikely to be welcomed in Paris or Berlin.

Germany’s governing Social Democratic party warned last week that her win would be bad for European cooperation. Lars Klingbeil, the chairman of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD, said Meloni had aligned herself with “anti-democratic” figures such as Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Earlier this month, Meloni’s MEPs voted against a resolution that condemned Hungary as “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”. Meloni is also allied to Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats and Spain’s far-right Vox party.

Exit poll results in full

To breakdown those exit poll results in full…

In total the rightwing alliance is set to win between 41 and 45% of the vote.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are on course to win 22-26%, Salvini’s Lega between 8.5% and 12.5%, and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia a very modest 6-8%. (That is why Meloni is the clear frontrunner for prime minister.)

The centre-left, if this exit poll proves right, is on course to garner between 17 and 21% of the vote – not so far behind the Brothers of Italy. But their alliance partners are smaller.

The combined forces of Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda’s parties have managed between 6.5% and 8.5%, according to the exit poll.

And the Five Star Movement, which pulled the plug on Mario Draghi’s government? Between 13.5% and 17.5%.

Updated

That poll would give the rightwing coalition between 227 and 257 seats in the Camera dei deputati and between 111 and 131 seats in the Senate or upper house.

Obviously those numbers are still vague, but they point to a resounding victory for the rightwing alliance of the far-right Brothers of Italy, the rightwing Forza Italia and the far-right Lega.

If that happens, Meloni is likely to be Italy’s next prime minister: its first woman at the head of a government, and that government the most rightwing since the second world war.

Updated

Clear victory for rightwing coalition, exit poll indicates

OK, the first exit poll is in, and it’s good news for Giorgia Meloni and the far-right Brothers of Italy.

According to the Consorzio Opinio Italia poll for Rai, the rightwing coalition has won between 41-45% of the vote and the left alliance 25-29.%. That would give the right a majority in both houses.

At this point we should make our regular health warning: Italian exit polls have a very chequered history, and are sometimes wrong. It’s well worth waiting for the projections to come.


Updated

Just minutes to go until the polls close and the first exit poll is expected.

My Guardian colleagues have launched this interactive graphic where you’ll be able to see the results as they come in.

Meloni votes...finally

Giorgia Meloni votes at a polling station in Rome.
Giorgia Meloni votes at a polling station in Rome. Photograph: Yara Nardi/Reuters

Giorgia Meloni has arrived to cast her vote at a polling booth at a school in Rome after postponing her appointment from this morning, reportedly due to a throng of journalists who had been waiting for her.

The change of plan had left the press baffled throughout the day. Meloni will then join the rest of her Brothers of Italy squad for an election party at Parco Dei Principi hotel...where a throng of around 400 journalists are waiting for her.

Updated

Why is Italy on verge of electing its first far-right leader since the second world war?

Giorgia Meloni’s political success owes much to her decision to keep her party out of the Mario Draghi’s cross-party government. The move cemented her as an opposition voice and has given her the leading position in a rightwing electoral coalition tipped to win this election.

But still, how can it be that Italy, which lived through Mussolini’s bloody regime and passed discriminatory laws against its Jewish citizens, is close to electing as prime minister the leader of a party with with its roots in neo-fascism and with some of its members performing the fascist salute during public commemorations?

To find some answers, one must go back to the immediate aftermath of the second world war, when the first issue for Italy to address was national unity. The toppling of Mussolini in 1943 was followed by bloody civil war between a Nazi-backed puppet state and the partisans of the Italian resistance, so when peace came to Europe, fears of aggravating civil tensions overrode the purging of fascists from Italian institutions and prosecuting them for war crimes.

While the Nuremberg trials against prominent members of the Nazi party began in Germany in November 1946, Italy, in part concerned about growing numbers of Communists, had from June of that year run an amnesty programme, releasing thousands of fascists from prison.

Giorgio Almirante, a culture minister in the Nazis’ short-lived puppet state, founded the Italian Social Movement (MSI) with former members of the Italian Fascist party in this climate of tolerance. By 1948, three neo-fascists sat in the Italian parliament.

It is from this heritage that the Brothers of Italy would later emerge. Brothers of Italy today shares its party logo, an Italian tricolour in the form of a flame, with the now defunct (MSI). Many members of Fratelli d’Italia are former members of MSI. Simply put, Italy is a country that never came to terms with its fascist past.

This is an interesting Twitter thread by Daniele Albertazzi, professor of politics at the University of Surrey, featuring the veteran Italy-watcher, formerly of this parish, John Hooper.

Albertazzi is arguing against the idea that a government formed by the Brothers of Italy-led alliance would be the most rightwing Italy has had since the second world war.

He cites as an example the government that sprouted from the 1994 election – a coalition of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Umberto Bossi’s Northern League and the National Alliance, successor of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

But Hooper disagrees.

If you haven’t had enough of Giorgia Meloni yet, here’s another clip from the Guardian’s Paul Lewis. As part of his series on rising populism, Paul sat down with her and Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon in 2018.

It did not go well.

(The Meloni interview starts at around 12.30 minutes in.)

How Steve Bannon’s far-right ‘Movement’ stalled in Europe

Updated

Bruno Segre, 104, a former Italian partisan and lawyer, is not scared by Giorgia Meloni, who in a recently surfaced video from 1996 said of the fascist leader:

Mussolini was a good politician. Everything he did he did for Italy.

Before going to vote at the local polling station in Turin, Segre told the newspaper la Repubblica:

The Constitution will defend us (from fascism). I am not afraid of this right and not even of Meloni, who I would define as an illiterate of democracy.

Updated

Roberto Saviano, the Italian essayist and author of Gomorrah, has written in the Guardian this weekend that “Meloni appears the most dangerous Italian political figure not because she explicitly evokes fascism or the practices of the black-shirted squadristi (militia), but because of her ambiguity.”

For more of that ambiguity, compare and contrast these two videos.

First is a clip that the Brothers of Italy leader released in August, apparently aimed mainly at the foreign press. Speaking in English, a besuited Meloni declares:

The Italian right has handed fascism over [to] history for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws.

The second video is footage from a rally Meloni spoke at, with rather more belligerence, in Andalucia alongside Vox, the Spanish far-right party, earlier this summer.

Yes to the natural family. No to LGBT lobbies. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology. Yes to the culture of life. No to the abyss of death.

It continues it that vein, and it’s because of performances like this that many voters fear a re-eruption of culture wars around issues such as abortion if Meloni becomes PM. (She has insisted, however, she does not intend to change Italy’s abortion law.)

Updated

Even as Enrico Letta, leader of the centre-left Partito Democratico, implores supporters to not give up hope, the soul-searching has already begun behind the scenes, writes my colleague Julian Coman in today’s Observer.

The PD, for those who haven’t been following the intricacies, is running with a smattering of small parties. It has stayed away from the Five Star Movement, and the centrist parties of Matteo Renzi (Italia Viva) and Carlo Calenda (Azione).

And, according to the polls, it simply won’t muster enough support to beat the rightwing alliance of Meloni, Salvini and Berlusconi.

One voter Julian spoke to gave her analysis:

The PD has become a middle-class, professional party and lost touch with the working class. There is an anger driving these great populist waves in Italy – for Salvini and now Meloni – and it’s to do with economic inequality. The left needs to persuade them back on board or it will be stuck.

Incidentally, I interviewed Letta when he was prime minister in 2013. He was warning about the threat of a populist wave surging across Europe. In that instance he was talking, locally, about the M5S. If you’d told him then that his chief foe would be Meloni, then a fringe player on the Italian political scene, I’m not sure he would have believed you.

All the polls indicate that Giorgia Meloni will emerge victorious. But there could be one spanner in the works: Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) and former prime minister.

In the final days of the electoral campaign, Conte led a formidable comeback, especially in southern Italy, where he is confident of the support of its 2.5 million inhabitants living beneath the poverty line.

At the moment, this group of people can benefit from the so-called “citizens’ income”, a basic income, which was a flagship M5S policy rolled out in 2019 when the party governed Italy.

Basic income has been one of the most discussed topics in the electoral campaign, with many critics pointing out that it has not effectively helped people to find jobs. The left wants to modify it, M5S wants to uphold it, and the hard-right, led by Meloni, wants to eliminate it.

That position has provoked fury among recipients of the basic income, who in Sicily and Campania represent 15% of voters. And Meloni knows it, issuing a video plea to “the South” on Friday, insisting:

It would have been easy in this electoral campaign to go the cities of the south and promised everyone money, like others have done. We haven’t done that. It would have been easy, but it wouldn’t have been serious.

If Conte does well enough, Meloni risks having to share an equal number of seats in the senate with opposition parties. And that would be a serious problem for her.

Turnout down on last election

Election day in Italy has been marked by long queues at polling stations with thousands of people waiting an hour or more to vote. Giorgia Meloni has postponed her vote because of the crowds, and Silvio Berlusconi remarked he had “never seen” such long queues (and he’s seen a lot of elections.)

But it doesn’t seem that the crowds are related to turnout. So far, that is eight percent lower than in the last election in 2018. By 7pm 51.25% of eligible voters had voted for the lower house or Camera dei deputati. In 2018, turnout at 7pm was 59.25%.

According to media reports, the sluggishness is due to an “anti-tampering sticker” devised to counter fraud. The sticker has an alphanumeric code and is applied to a corner of the ballot. An authorised worker at the polling station removes it before inserting the ballot in the ballot box.

Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni attend the final rally of the rightwing coalition in central Rome, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni attend the final rally of the rightwing coalition in central Rome, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

My colleague Angela Giuffrida has written a fascinating analysis of the challenges awaiting Giorgia Meloni should the rightwing alliance triumph at the polls. Aside from her relative inexperience at top-level politics, Angela writes, there’s the not-insignificant issue of Matteo Salvini…

The alliance has endeavoured to put on a united front, but Salvini, whose popularity has vastly dwindled amid Meloni’s rise, finds the prospect of her becoming prime minister, a role he has long coveted, unbearable. In October last year, after Brothers of Italy managed to draw votes away from the League in its northern strongholds in local elections, a secret recording revealed Salvini hitting out at Meloni, calling her a “pain in the ass”.

The rivalry between the pair has been simmering since then, and while they share several common policies, they recently clashed over one of the most crucial themes of the moment – sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Meloni has pledged that her government would continue to support the sanctions, while Salvini has criticised them for “bringing Italy to its knees”.

A photo of an elderly voter’s anti-Meloni protest sign has gone viral in Italy this weekend. Seated next to his cane on a bench in Rome, the sign he holds up reads:

I was born under Mussolini. I don’t want to die under Meloni. God help us!”

Pope urges Italians to welcome refugees

Pope Francis has chosen today to remind us all of his strong belief in the importance of welcoming and nurturing refugees and migrants.

Pope Francis celebrates Holy Mass in the southern Italian city of Matera on 25 September 2022. EPA/VATICAN MEDIA
Pope Francis celebrates Holy Mass in the southern Italian city of Matera on 25 September 2022. EPA/VATICAN MEDIA Photograph: Vatican Media Handout/EPA

My colleague Lorenzo Tondo reports that, at the end of an open-air mass in the city of Matera earlier today, the pope said:

“Migrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated. Let us renew our commitment to building the future in accordance with God’s plan: a future in which migrants and refugees may live in peace and with dignity.

Francis made no direct reference to the election, adds Lorenzo, but his message “rang loud and clear.”

Migration has been a central theme in the electoral campaign of extreme right parties, led by the leader of Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who once said Italians needed to “repatriate the migrants back to their countries and then sink the boats that rescued them”.

He adds:

Meloni… said that if she becomes prime minister, she intends to put in place a naval blockade in the Mediterranean to stop migration to Italy.

Updated

Some nuts and bolts about tonight.

We expect exit polls shortly after voting closes at 11pm local time (10pm UK time). Caution: while these were pretty accurate in 2018’s general election, they have not always proved reliable.

The first projections (based on partial results) for the senate (upper house) should start to come in from 11.50pm local time, according to Ansa. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the same projections for the lower house, however: they’re expected around 2am.

My colleague Jon Henley has written this helpful explainer of the election here, including a reminder of how we got here (the populist Five Star Movement pulled the plug on Mario Draghi’s coalition in July).

Key points:

  • There are 400 seats up for grabs in the lower house and 200 in the senate- a much smaller parliament, all told, than before. (The Italians voted in a 2020 referendum to cut the number of parliamentarians from more than 900 to 600.)

  • The rightwing coalition, led by the Brothers of Italy, includes Matteo Salvini’s far-right League, and the rightwing Forza Italia, led by young rising star Silvio Berlusconi.

  • The PD, the main centre-left party, is running with the support of some minor, leftwing, pro-European and green parties. The M5S is running alone, led by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte.

If you want to get a flavour of Giorgia Meloni’s political style, here’s her election day Instagram post.

“September 25th. Enough said,” she says, looking deeply into the camera and winking. She also happens to be carrying a pair of melons… because melons, meloni, geddit?

If you want to get more of a sense of Meloni the politician, have a read of this by my colleague Angela Giuffrida who visited Garbatella, the neighbourhood of Rome where Meloni grew up, and went to see what used to be the local branch of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI)‘s youth wing.

Undeterred by the at times violent confrontations between young left and rightwing militants in the early 1990s, and the messages to “kill the fascists” daubed on the walls of Garbatella, Meloni knocked on its door aged 15 and signed up,” writes Angela.

Those in the neighbourhood who have recollections of the young Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party emerged from the National Alliance, a descendant of MSI, say the toxic political atmosphere at the time was formative.”

It's election day in Italy

Good evening, buonasera and welcome to all who are following tonight’s Italian election results. I’m Lizzy Davies and I – along with Guardian colleagues Angela Giuffrida and Lorenzo Tondo in Italy – will be bringing you all the latest from this potentially landmark vote.

If we are to believe the polls, this election is likely to produce the most rightwing government Italy has had since the second world war. A coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, is tipped to secure a sizeable victory in both houses of parliament while taking between 44 and 47% of the vote.

If that happens, Meloni, 45, is the frontrunner to become prime minister – Italy’s first far-right leader since Benito Mussolini. Not that she likes the comparison, of course. Meloni has insisted that the Italian right consigned fascism to history decades ago, and has compared Brothers of Italy to the UK Tory party and the US Republicans.

Of course, the polls aren’t always right, and on Friday Enrico Letta, leader of the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD), urged supporters to make a final push, declaring: “A comeback is possible.”

But is it, really? Stay tuned to find out.

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