Clear victory for the right-wing coalition, the survey 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 right-wing coalition won between 41-45% of the votes and the left-wing alliance 25-29%. This would give the right a majority in both chambers.
At this point, we should issue our usual health warning: Italian exit polls have a very checkered history, and sometimes they get it wrong. It’s worth waiting for the screenings to arrive.
Updated at 22.09 BST
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The main center-left group concedes defeat
Just before our live coverage of the evening ended, Reuters reported that Italy’s main centre-left group, the Democratic Party, had conceded defeat in the election, saying it would be the biggest opposition force next parliament
Read our full story here:
Lorenzo TondoThe leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, poses with her ballot in a polling station. Photograph: Yara Nardi/Reuters
In the 2018 election, his party, the Brothers of Italy, won only 4.3% of the vote. Four years later, Giorgia Meloni will become the country’s first president and her party will 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 take some of the blame for this shocking turn. Italy’s economic and political instability did the rest.
Meloni will now be tasked with leading 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.
His coalition seems at this point to have the numbers to govern for the next five years. But there are clear challenges within his coalition: his bedfellows Matteo Salvini (currently on trial for alleged migrant kidnapping) and scandal-plagued former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi have complications.
Without a doubt, a new political chapter has just begun, the era of the extreme right. And if Meloni does, it won’t stop in Italy.
The Prime Minister of Poland congratulates Meloni
Poland’s right-wing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has congratulated Giorgia Meloni, as well as Viktor Orbán (see post here).
The impetus that a right-wing government, led by a far-right politician, in one of the major Western European countries, a member of the G7 and NATO, will give to these right-wing populist governments cannot be underestimated. long date
More soul searching on the left.
Antonello Guerrera, the prolific British correspondent for La Repubblica, posted this tweet. Attention Keir Starmer.
Lessons for the UK Labor Party from the Italian Democratic Party disaster in the #italyelections:
– Have vision, vision, vision – Be bold, bold, bold – Be charismatic, especially in leadership – Capture the protest vote, when reasonable – Don’t pass an election law against you
— Antonello Guerrera (@antoguerrera) September 25, 2022
Closing Summary
We will be closing this blog soon. Thanks to everyone who stuck with us for these historic results.
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Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist origins, are predicted in exit polls to have won enough votes to give their right-wing alliance a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament.
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If these results are confirmed, and we must be cautious until they do, Meloni will be the head of the prime minister, the first woman in the history of Italy to occupy Palazzo Chigi.
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With his own party in coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia, a Meloni-led government is likely to be the most right-wing Italy has had since the second world war.
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Meloni’s likely victory has already brought congratulations from Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s fourth-term authoritarian prime minister. He welcomed the arrival of “friends who share a common vision”.
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The bloc led by the center-left Democratic Party predicts, according to the exit poll, 25.5%-29.5% of the vote. The Five Star Movement, which triggered the political crisis by withdrawing support for Mario Draghi’s government, is expected to have won 13.5-17.5%.
The Hungarian Orban congratulates the extreme right Meloni
Lorenzo Tondo
Giorgia Meloni has been congratulated by the Prime Minister of Hungary, 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 at 11.16pm BST
The first projection, based on a proportion of the actual votes cast, is the upper house. They give Meloni’s far-right Italia brothers 24.6% of the vote, with the center-left Partito Democratico the second party with 19.4%.
The Five Star Movement occupies third place, with 16.5%.
But crucially for Meloni, his alliance partners, the far-right Lega and the far-right Forza Italia, poll 8.5% and 8% respectively. Which gives their alliance the majority they need.
Looks like a very good night for Meloni.
If you’re new to the blog and want to know more about Giorgia Meloni, the woman likely to become Italy’s first far-right prime minister since World War II, check out this article by Angela Giuffrida of the Guardian .
[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 the MSI youth movement, where she said she found solidarity in a close-knit, if marginalized, community of militants often portrayed as evil or violent , who devoted all their time to politics instead of clubbing or shopping like their peers.
As we previously reported, Meloni rejects the idea that his politics are fascist, arguing that the Italian right consigned fascism to history decades ago. He has said that there are no “fascists, racists or nostalgic anti-Semites in the DNA of the Brothers of Italy” and that he has always gotten rid of “ambiguous people”.
However, not everyone is convinced. Brothers of Italy has retained MSI’s tricolor flame in its official logo and its headquarters are located at the same address, Via della Scrofa in central Rome, where MSI established office in 1946.
In the summer, Meloni, whose party motto is “God, family and country”, traveled to Marbella where he expressed his hardline views on immigration and homosexuality during an aggressive speech at a far-right rally Spanish version of its Vox counterpart. (You can also watch that video here.)
Salvini: the right-wing alliance has a “clear advantage”
Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, posted his reaction on Twitter, declaring that his alliance has a “clear advantage” in both the upper and lower chambers.
It’s going to be a long night, but I want to say THANK YOU
Center-right with a clear advantage in both the Chamber and the Senate! It will be a long night, but now I want to say THANK YOU❤️💪
— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) September 25, 2022
There will be a lot of soul-searching for the Italian left in the coming weeks if these poll results are confirmed. In fact, it has already started…