The Elections In Italy: What Is Happening?

Italians are voting in an election that is forecast to deliver the country’s most radical rightwing government since the end of the second world war, and a prime minister ready to become a model for nationalist parties across Europe.

A coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, is expected by polls ahead of the vote to secure a comfortable victory in both houses of parliament while taking between 44 and 47% of the vote.

Meloni’s party is also set to scoop the biggest share of the votes within the coalition, which includes the far-right League, led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, meaning she could become Italy’s first female prime minister.The coalition’s victory, however, raises questions about the country’s alliances in Europe, and while Meloni has sought to send reassuring messages, her conquest of power 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.

The 45-year-old firebrand politician from Rome received an endorsement from Vox towards the end of her campaign, and in response said the two parties were linked by “mutual respect, friendship and loyalty” while hoping victory for Brothers of Italy would give Vox some thrust in Spain.

“Meloni has an ambition to represent a model not only for Italy, but for Europe – this is something new [for the right in Italy] compared with the past,” said Nadia Urbinati, a political theorist at New York’s Columbia University and the University of Bologna. “She has contacts with other conservative parties, who want a Europe with less civil rights … the model is there and so is the project.”