A rightwing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy is on course for a decisive victory in Italy’s snap election, having trounced a range of rivals that failed to forge a unified front to compete more effectively against the bloc, exit polls showed.
Meloni’s coalition — with Matteo Salvini’s nationalist League and media tycoon and former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia — is believed to have secured between 42 and 49 per cent of the total vote, enough to secure a comfortable parliamentary majority.
However, the rightwing coalition appears to have fallen short of the two-thirds of seats that it would need to the press ahead with its plans to amend Italy’s constitution, the polls indicated.
In Italy’s complicated election system, a third of parliamentary seats are awarded in first-past the post races, which gave a significant advantage to centre-right parties that united behind a single candidate in each first-past the post-race, while their opponents squabbled among themselves.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which is an heir to the neo-fascist movement — will be the largest party in the new parliament, with around a quarter of the vote. It looks likely to have taken a greater percentage of votes than the League and Forza Italia combined, the exit polls showed.
The results mark a triumph for Meloni, given that the Brothers of Italy secured just 4 per cent of the vote in the last general election in 2018, though analysts cautioned that support for her could prove ephemeral given the severe challenges she will face.
More to come on this developing story
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