Snap general elections were held in Italy on 25 September 2022. After the fall of the Draghi government, which led to a parliamentary impasse, President Sergio Mattarella dissolved Parliament on 21 July, and called for new elections. Regional elections in Sicily were held on the same day. The results of the general election showed the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy, a right-wing political party with neo-fascist roots, winning an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament. Meloni was appointed Prime Minister of Italy on 22 October, becoming the first woman to hold the office.
In a record-low voter turnout, Meloni's party became the largest in Parliament with 26% of the vote; as per the pre-election agreement among the centre-right coalition parties, she became the prime ministerial candidate supported by the winning coalition. The League and Forza Italia suffered losses, polling 8% each, and Us Moderates polled below 1%. The centre-left coalition slightly improved its 2018 results in terms of vote share and seats in percentage with the Democratic Party polling 19% and the Greens and Left Alliance passing the 3% threshold; More Europe and Civic Commitment failed to reach the election threshold. The Five Star Movement defied single-digit polls before the campaign and reached 15%. The Action – Italia Viva alliance polled 7%. Among the others to be represented in Parliament were two regionalist parties: South calls North and the South Tyrolean People's Party. Due to the "Rosatellum" and its mixed electoral system using parallel voting, the centre-right coalition was able to win an absolute majority of seats, despite receiving 44% of the votes, by winning 83% of the single-member districts under the first-past-the-post of the system.
As a result of the 2020 Italian constitutional referendum, the size of Parliament was reduced to 400 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 200 members of the Senate of the Republic to be elected, down from 630 and 315, respectively. In addition, the minimum voting age for the Senate was the same as for the Chamber (18 years old and no longer 25), which marked the first time the two houses had identical electorates.
Observers commented that the results shifted the geopolitics of the European Union, following right wing populist and far-right gains in France, Spain, and Sweden. It was also noted that the election outcome would mark Italy's first far-right-led government and the country's most right-wing government since 1945. The newly elected legislature was seated on 13 October, and proceeded to elect Ignazio La Russa, a known admirer of Benito Mussolini, and Lorenzo Fontana, a strong opponent of LGBT rights, as President of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, respectively. The Meloni Cabinet was sworn in on 22 October, and received parliamentary approval through two votes of confidence (one in each House of Parliament) a few days thereafter.
Background.
In the 2018 Italian general election, held on 4 March, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament. The centre-right coalition, in which Matteo Salvini's League emerged as the main political force, won a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, while the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes. The centre-left coalition, led by Matteo Renzi of the governing Democratic Party (PD), came third. Due to the PD and centre-left's poor results, Renzi resigned on 12 March, his place being taken "ad interim" by Maurizio Martina.
The League continued the Italian nationalist turn it took into the 2018 general election. In October 2018, the League was founded as a sister party to promote Salvini's candidature as Prime Minister of Italy. Political commentators have since described it as a parallel party of the League, with the aim of politically replacing the latter, which had been burdened by a statutory debt of €49 million. The League's statute presented it as a nationalist and souverainist party. On 22 January 2020, four days before the regional elections, Di Maio resigned as the M5S leader, and was replaced "ad interim" by Vito Crimi.
As a result of the hung parliament, protracted negotiations were required before a new government could be formed. The talks between the M5S and League resulted in the proposal of the self-declared "government of change" under the leadership of Giuseppe Conte, a university law professor close to the M5S. After some bickering with President Sergio Mattarella, Conte's cabinet, which was dubbed by the media the "first all-populist government" in Western Europe, was sworn in on 1 June.
The 2019 European Parliament election was a win for the League, which obtained 34 percent of the vote and 20 seats, more than any other party in the country. In August 2019, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced a motion of no confidence against Conte after growing tensions within the majority. Many political analysts believe the no confidence motion was an attempt to force early elections to improve the League's standing in the Italian Parliament, ensuring Salvini could become the next Prime Minister. On 20 August, following the parliamentary debate in which he accused Salvini of being a political opportunist who "had triggered the political crisis only to serve his personal interest", Prime Minister Conte resigned his post to President Mattarella. Meanwhile, the M5S started a decline in both opinion polls, deputies and senators, and election results, starting with the 2019 European Parliament election. After the meagre results, Di Maio won a vote of confidence in his leadership and pledged to reform the party. In the general election held in March 2018, the M5S had won 227 deputies and 112 senators; by February 2022, the party had declined to 157 deputies and 62 senators, though it remained the biggest party in the parliament.
On 21 August President Mattarella started the consultations with all the parliamentary groups. On the same day, the national direction of the PD officially opened to a cabinet with the M5S, based on pro-Europeanism, a green economy, sustainable development, the fight against economic inequality, and a new immigration policy. As the talks resulted in an unclear outcome, President Mattarella announced a second round of consultation for 27 or 28 August. In the days that preceded the second round, a confrontation between the PD and the M5S started, while the left-wing parliamentary group LeU announced its support for a potential M5S–PD cabinet. On 28 August, the PD's newly elected secretary Nicola Zingaretti announced at the Quirinal Palace his favourable position on forming a new government with the M5S, with Conte at its head. On the same day, Mattarella summoned Conte to the Quirinal Palace for 29 August to give him the task of forming a new cabinet. On 3 September, members of the M5S voted on the Rousseau platform in favour of an agreement with the PD under the premiership of Conte, with more than 79% of votes out of nearly 80,000 voters. On 4 September, Conte announced the ministers of his new cabinet, which was sworn in at the Quirinal Palace on the following day. On 18 September, Renzi left the PD to found the liberal party Italia Viva (IV); he then joined the government with IV to keep the League and Salvini out of power.
In October 2019 Parliament approved the Fraccaro Reform, named after Riccardo Fraccaro, the M5S deputy who was the bill's first signatory. The fourth and final vote in the Chamber of Deputies came on 8 October 2019, with 553 votes in favour and 14 against. In the final vote, the bill was supported by both the majority and the opposition; only the liberal party More Europe (+E) and other small groups voted against. The reform provided a cut in the number of MPs, which would shrink from 630 to 400 deputies and from 315 to 200 senators. On 20–21 September 2020, Italians largely approved the reform with nearly 70% of votes through a constitutional referendum.
In January 2020, Italy became one of the countries worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Conte's government was the first in the Western world to implement a national lockdown to stop the spread of the disease. Despite being widely approved by public opinion, the lockdown was also described as the largest suppression of constitutional rights in the history of the Italian Republic. In January 2021, Renzi's party Italia Viva withdrew its support for Conte's government, starting a government crisis. Although Conte was able to win confidence votes in Parliament in the subsequent days, he chose to resign due to failing to reach an absolute majority in the Senate. After negotiations to form a third Conte cabinet failed, Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, became Prime Minister on 13 February at the head of a national unity government composed of independent technocrats and politicians from the League, M5S, PD, FI, IV, and LeU. Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) was the sole main party at the opposition.
In March 2021, the PD's secretary Zingaretti resigned after growing tensions within the PD, with the party's minority accusing him for the management of the government crisis. Many prominent members of the party asked to former Prime Minister Enrico Letta to become the new leader; on 14 March, he was elected as the new secretary by the PD's national assembly. In August 2021, Conte was elected president of the M5S. In February 2022, a Naples' court ruled in favour of three M5S activists, suspending Conte's presidency. On 19 February, Conte appealed to the court's decision, on the grounds that he was not aware of the 2018 party statute, which provided for the exclusion from voting of those who had joined the M5S for less than six months, and the voting procedure was valid.
In the Italian presidential election held in late January 2022, President Mattarella was re-elected, despite having ruled out a second term, after the governing parties asked him to do so when no other candidate was viable.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine sent shockwave through the Italian political spectrum: Prime Minister Draghi immediately pledged support for Ukraine and was rapidly joined in this by the Democratic Party and Brothers of Italy (which abandoned its pro-Russian views and adopted an atlanticist line): on 18 March the Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly approved the sending of military aid to Ukraine, followed by the Senate on 31 March 2022. Despite having voted in favour of military aid, the Five Star Movement, the League and Forza Italia later became increasingly critical of support to Ukraine, causing tensions in the majority.
During summer 2022, rumours arose that M5S might withdraw its support of the national unity government, including allegations that Draghi privately criticized Conte and asked M5S founder Beppe Grillo to replace him. This came amid tension between the M5S and the Draghi government on economic and environmental issues, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, which also caused a split within the M5S. In June 2022, Di Maio formed Together for the Future (IpF), which continued to support the Draghi government.
On 12 July, Draghi stated he would resign if the M5S withdraws its support to the government. On 14 July, the M5S eventually revoked the support to the government of national unity regarding a decree concerning economic stimulus to contrast the 2021 energy crisis. On the same day, Draghi resigned; his resignation was rejected by Mattarella. On 21 July, Draghi resigned again after a new confidence vote in the Senate failed to pass with an absolute majority, following defections of the M5S, the League, and FI. Mattarella accepted Draghi's resignation and asked him to remain in place to handle current affairs.
On the following day, Mattarella officially dissolved the parliament and the snap election was called for 25 September 2022.
Electoral campaign.
Following the dissolution of Parliament, the electoral campaign officially began. Within the centre-left coalition, the Democratic Party (PD) secretary Enrico Letta ruled out an alliance with Giuseppe Conte's Five Star Movement (M5S), which he had always advocated in the previous months. Letta said that the government crisis brought an "irreversible break" between the two parties. Conte accused Letta of being "arrogant and hypocritical", and the League and Forza Italia (FI) of "having bullied" M5S "in front of the nation", adding that M5S would run alone in this election. Conte and M5S declared themselves to be part of the progressive pole and to