The 2020 regional elections in Italy: sub-national politics in the year of the pandemic

Abstract

This article focuses on eight regional elections held in Italy in 2020, the year of the Coronavirus pandemic. It looks at both the January and September rounds. Even though these two sets of elections took place, respectively, at the end and at the beginning of two distinctive 'phases', separated by the Covid-19 outbreak, they share some important characteristics. The discussion starts from a short overview of the events leading to the polling days, looking in particular at pre-election coalition building, the electoral campaigns and the positioning of key leaders. It then moves onto the analysis of the election results. It considers changes in political participation, support for the major parties, the strengthening of local and non-partisan lists, volatility and shifts in political representation. The overall pattern is one of increasing territorial complexity and fragmentation: regional elections now clearly follow a logic of their own, dominated more by local leaders than by national parties.

Italy and Europe: from competence to Solidarity to competence

“…The more political issues highlighted something different. The regional elections showed the weakness of the main coalition parties and of the alliance between them; the PD did better than expected in Tuscany, but the fact that it ran without support from the M5s and that the contest was even close still resonated (Vampa 2021). For its part, the M5s did very poorly across all seven regions that held contests.…”

“…The January 2020 regional elections in Emilia Romagna were a first major political test. The centre-left coalition passed, but not by a wide margin (Vampa 2021).…”

“…International bond market participants started to pay close attention to Italian regional politics. When the votes were counted, the PD held onto the region (Vampa 2021). Nevertheless, the sense that Conte's second government remained in place only because early elections were in nobody's self-interest outside the centreright opposition became ever more deeply rooted.…”

Performing (during) the Coronavirus Crisis: The Italian Populist Radical Right between National Opposition and Subnational Government

“…Some of these regions were led by League-affiliated governors, as in the case of Lombardia and Veneto. The different roles in the national and subnational arenas offer us an unprecedented opportunity to examine the changing strategy and fortunes of the PRR between government and opposition (Bobba and McDonnell 2016), but also consider subnational politics as an arena marked by personalization and responding to its own logics (Vampa 2021). The two arenas of PRR activity are presented in turn in the following subsections.…”

“…1 We are therefore led to focus on the national and subnational levels as concomitant arenas of government and opposition. While recent regional elections have offered room for reflection on the state of Italian politics (Tronconi and Valbruzzi 2020;Vampa 2021), very little research has taken the activity of the PRR at the subnational level to heart (cf. Paxton and Peace 2021).…”