Italians vote to elect a new government with an eye on their pockets

Faced with the deep division of the center-left, the union of the center-right is greatly favored by a electoral law that rewards alliances. He needs to achieve around 40 percent of the vote to obtain an absolute majority in Parliament. If not, he will have a hard time getting a majority, especially in the Senate.

fear of crisis

A very recent poll shows that the main concerns of Italians, tired after an aggressive campaign, focus on five issues that affect their pockets. First of all, the high cost of living and the energy crisis. And then, in this order, taxes, wages, stagnant for three decades and below the European average, and poverty, with some six million people who are absolutely poor. Behind these five economic issues, in the interest of the campaign, issues such as immigration, the environment and rights were largely relegated.

The parties have failed to distinguish themselves from each other by offering solid and convincing solutions. Hence the disenchantment of many voters, which suggests that abstention will be high, higher than that of the 2018 elections, when 27.1 percent of the electorate did not vote.

There has been an exception when it comes to transmitting a message that resonates with voters: the 5-Star Movement (M5E) has mobilized in the south, the poor region of the country, focusing its attention on poverty. Its leader, former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, defended what was the electoral banner of the M5E with excellent results in 2018 (then he won the elections with 32 percent of the vote), the so-called citizenship income, a subsidy for the unemployed and people in serious difficulty. It is received by 1.6 million Italians; of them, two thirds in the south. Conte has been very adept at using that lever, to the point that he started the campaign with 10 percent in voting intention and today he could exceed 15 percent.

The truth is that in the Italian campaign there has not even been a single debate on television among the main candidates. In the absence of a serious confrontation over proposals, the relations between the future policy of the likely right-wing government and the European and international context have often been present.

From Brussels, the European chancelleries, Washington and all the international media, it is observed with special interest these Italian elections, because the probable arrival at the Chigi Palace, the seat of the Head of Government, of the candidate Giorgia Meloni, involved in controversy due to her post-fascist origins, is a great novelty. The issue of fascism as such, which she abjured, was absent from the election campaign.

In the field of foreign policy, concerns have focused, above all, on a certain ambiguity by Meloni about the European Union; in his support and that of his ally Matteo Salvini to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, which has raised fierce fighting with other parties; or in the dissensions that exist in the coalition about the war provoked by Putin in the Ukraine. Meloni follows a very Atlanticist line of support for sanctions against Russia, while Salvini is critical and in favor of lifting them.

eurosceptic background

Analysts believe that these issues related to international politics will have little impact at the time of the vote. According to the political scientist and professor of Contemporary History at the Luiss University of Rome, Giovanni Orsino«in Italy, conflicts over foreign and European policy end up being more liturgical than substantial, for the simple reason that, just as the country cannot cope with inflation or the energy crisis on its own, and any promises that the parties do about it will ring hollow, in the same way Italy can only remain in solidarity with the European Union and the Atlantic Community”.

“Recess is over,” Meloni said during the electoral campaign, reflecting that, deep down, it is eurosceptic. In Brussels, his purpose is to defend Italy’s interests in Europe, “as the French and Germans do,” he said in a lengthy interview with ABC.

But with Italy’s huge foreign debt (2.7 trillion euros, 150 percent of GDP), Meloni’s room for maneuver is slim. So believes Nathalie Tocci, director of the Italian Institute of International Affairs: “The international context does not really allow much play, unless you want to take the country bankrupt“, Explain. “We are in the midst of a crisis and the markets have their eyes on Italy. They will be watching her at every step », she concludes.