The trio – led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist origins, and including Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – has enjoyed strong and robust support in recent months and has remained relatively tight-knit. Contrasted with a campaign by his main rival, the center-left Democratic party, which was so innocent that it managed to breathe new life into the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) in southern Italy. First to take to the stage at Rome’s closing ceremony on Thursday night was three-time former prime minister Berlusconi, who rattled off a list of his past achievements. Then came Salvini, who said that in power he would resume a policy of blocking migrants from disembarking at Italian ports. The most enthusiastic applause was reserved for Meloni, the 45-year-old from Rome who could become Italy’s first female prime minister. Ask Meloni’s supporters why they like it, and the repeated answer is: “It’s cohesive.” “Meloni’s ideas are always the same, they haven’t changed over the years,” said Francesca De Acutis. “To get this far, he never compromised.” Maria Rachele Ruiu, a Brothers of Italy candidate from the anti-abortion lobby group Pro Vita, said Meloni was rewarded for her consistency. “She can be trusted,” he added. Ruiu said she was running to help promote policies that would “help women who are facing financial difficulties go through with their pregnancy” instead of choosing abortion. Caio Mussolini, the dictator’s great-grandson who ran for the Brothers of Italy in the 2019 European parliamentary elections, was also in the crowd to give Meloni support. He criticized the left’s campaign, saying “the specter of fascism is all they have […] This was one of the worst campaigns, full of insults and attacks because they have no projects or ideas. They make my great grandfather immortal. In my opinion, fascism ended with his [death] in 1945″. The final polls before the blackout period two weeks ago predicted a landslide victory for the team. But more recently there has been a surprise surge in support for M5S in Italy’s poorer southern regions, where voters have responded to leader Giuseppe Conte’s promise to maintain the party’s flagship policy, a citizen’s income for the poor. Meloni’s plan to scrap the controversial policy, which cost the Italian government 7.1 billion euros in its first year, was vulnerable to fraud and did not create the jobs it was intended to, has unleashed fury among voters whose lives depend on it. from her. . Three million Italians benefit from the income, of which 70% are in the south. In Sicily, Italy’s poorest region, almost 300,000 families receive the subsidy. During a Meloni rally in Palermo last week, many voters carried signs that read: “Don’t touch citizens’ income.” Conte told the Guardian the income “caused a social storm”. “When people wear signs like this, it’s like these voters are saying ‘our dignity is inviolable, our freedom is inviolable,’” he said. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Further north, however, Meloni’s stance on income has attracted support from employers, especially bar and restaurant owners, who blame the policy for their recruitment struggles. However, experts have been put off by M5S’s resurgence in the final stages of the election campaign, citing “secret polls” in recent days that predicted a boost for the party to around 15 or 16% of the vote, potentially enough to give the right-wing coalition a a slimmer majority and a breach of its unity, especially if the League, which had about 12% before the blackout period, scores less than the M5S. M5S won 32% in the 2018 election, but support quickly dried up after a failed governing coalition with the League, declining further during subsequent alliances with the Democratic Party and Mario Draghi’s broad unity government. The collapse of the Draghi government in July was, in fact, triggered by the M5S. For the party to have a chance of returning to government, it will have to work together again with the Democratic Party, whose leader, Enrico Letta, vowed on Friday “never again.” The citizen’s income battle could give M5S a boost but is unlikely to change the course of this election. Wolfango Piccoli, the co-chairman of London-based research firm Teneo, said the same secret polls also suggested the right would win with a majority. “The electoral system doesn’t really play well for a party that has a high concentration of votes in only certain districts,” he added.
