Record abstention: from Rome to Turin Italy goes left. Center-right shock, only Trieste resists
Trieste remains in the center-right. Benevento remains with Clemente Mastella. For the rest, the center-left wins. Above all, the center-left that archives (as in Rome and Turin) the experience of the grill management of large cities. Eight due. A result that especially makes Enrico Letta happy. The secretary of the Democratic Party had said it for some time: we need a broad although not homogeneous coalition and this coalition has borne fruit, given that already in the first round it had made it possible to conquer Naples without a ballot and reconfirm Bologna and especially Milan. It’s time to snatch Cosenza, Isernia and Savona from the center-right.
The vote, however, was heavily influenced by the turnout. Never so low in the history of our democracy. In the end, more than one voter out of two abstained from voting, given that 43.93% of those entitled voted. While in the first round the turnout was nine percentage points more (52.67%).
If we go into the details of the individual cases, then, we note that the numbers are even more merciless. And, from the point of view of all the players on the political scene, worrying. In Rome, for example, only 40.68% of voters showed up for the ballot. Of these, six out of ten have chosen the former minister of the second Conte government. So, in the end, the new mayor of Rome was crowned by 25% of the Romans. And the secretary of Salvini and of the dem converge on the fact that growing abstention is a problem for democracy.
The data of Turin and of the other cities called to the ballot are not different. In the Piedmontese capital six percentage points were lost compared to the first round (only 42.1% voted). In Latina, 11 points were lost between the first and second rounds. 62% of voters had voted in the first round, down to 51 in the second round (a figure, however, above the national average). In Rome and Turin, however, the “civil society” option was also rejected. As in Milan and Naples, non-political candidates were punished. A fact that everyone, especially in the center-right, wants to discuss.
Beyond the issue of abstention there is also the general trend of the vote. And in a comparison with the previous elections (2016) some precise data emerge. The first is undoubtedly the débâcle of the Cinquestelle Movement. In 2016 the center left won eight mayors (today 15); the center-right took 7 (today five, losing Savona among the capitals); M5s had three (today no mayor in the capitals). The centrist Mastella and the civic lists respectively conquered Benevento and Latina (results confirmed).
Among the other municipalities where the ballots took place, the center-left is also confirmed in Varese (the city of Giorgetti and the Lombard governor Fontana), Carbonia, Caserta, Cosenza and Isernia. Clemente Mastella, winner in Benevento, already speaks of a political laboratory to “give the country a real center”. At the time of the announcement of his victory, Gualtieri confirmed that he exhibits in his council there will be no members of the 5-star Movement and also of Action, (“the perimeter is that of the coalition” that won, he explains in the heat of the moment) but assures us that there it will be the contribution of external personalities. Putting himself in this sense in the wake of Beppe Sala. So the Naples case – where the Giallorossi alliance was consolidated around the former minister of Count Gaetano Manfredi – remained isolated.
The Trieste case is almost a story unto itself. Roberto Dipiazza confirms himself as mayor of Trieste for a fourth term and snatches a smile from the center-right in a difficult round of ballots. The 68-year-old exponent of Forza Italia obtained 51.29% against 48.71% of the dem Francesco Russo who in any case recovered consensus compared to the first round. «I won and this is something that I will never forget and I will always do everything for my city with great love» comments Dipiazza moved. And the success of Dipiazza is paired with that obtained a fortnight ago by another blue: Roberto Occhiuto who reconfirmed the triumph of Forza Italia (and of the center-right) obtained by Santelli at the beginning of 2020, twenty months later.