Huge victory for the center left opposition in Italian regional elections.


In spite of campaign genius in reverse (such as changing their name *again* to L'Unione) the opposition won 11 of the 13 regional elections held Sunday and Monday. 6 of the regions had center right presidenti before this elections. The center left received 53% of votes cast which is about 8% more than the center right. The coalition in power tends to be penalised in regional elections, but nobody expected such a blowout.

Berlusconi will, of course, deny that this is a crushing defeat for him. No one will believe him.

Key results include Lazio where the massively financed campaign (approaching a cult of personality) of the outgoing "post" fascist Presidente Storace was undermined by the spoiler candidacy of Mussolini (no joke) enabling the center left candidate Marrazzo to win. This was untypical. The more general pattern was a huge shift to the left.

The new presidente of Puglia (heel of the boot extreme South should be traditional and very Catholic) is Nicky Vendola an openly gay communist. When Vendola won a L'Unione primary (the only primary election this round I think) the word was that they were fools to hold primaries in Italy and that they had shot themselves in the foot.

Bucking the trend Roberto Formigoni was re-elected president of Lombardy in spite of my efforts to confince people that he is the Roberto Frimigoni who got money from Saddam Hussein. I just don't understand those frigging Lombard Frimigoni supporters.
The center right also kept Veneto the region where the left has historically been weakest.

Regioni are the largest political units smaller than the whole country. They are no where near as important as U.S. states of course, but regional governments do have an important, indeed leading, role in health care. The power of regional governments is (was ?) to be much increased in a major constitutional reform following pressure from the Lega Nord. The center right might suddenly discover the disadvantages of federalism.

An important effect of the surprisingly huge opposition victory is to strengthen the position of Romano Prodi as presumptive opposition candidate for Prime Minister. He was the symbolic leader of the national campaign for the center left in the regional elections so he wins points. This makes it more possible that the opposition will manage to avoid fighting over the spoils of their victory in the next national election until, you know, the election is actually over.

Speaking of genius in reverse, Fausto Bertinotti head of the still communists saw the risk of a center left victory in the upcoming parliamentary elections. He announced that he would not be willing to be a cabinet minister (not that anyone has asked him and, as mentioned above, the parliamentary elections haven't technically been held yet).

I don't think that people who aren't resident in Italy and haven't been uhm entertained by Berlusconi for four years can possibly understand how he managed to get squashed by a coalition that never coalesces.

Been a while since I had fun on an election night.

Update: Big corrected to huge and 55% corrected to 53% and 10 % to 8%.