Italy 2013: The official thread

[minionofmidas]

The election would have been in april anyways. April, march, february, does it really matter?

[minionofmidas]

Unsurprisingly, it turns out Italy's "new", "dynamic" and "vibrant" political movement is actually a little dictatorship ran by a madman who thinks he's the messiah.

Ah, right. So he's going to win the election, then.

Worse outcomes are possible.

[minionofmidas]

These people need to learn a history lesson. Fratelli d'Italia is a leftwing song, rammed down the right's throat as a national anthem in 1947.

[minionofmidas]

What are diverse deadlines for forming parties, formalizing lists, declaring alliances?

Looks to me like these things may actually be important this time around.

[minionofmidas]

Latest poll by German firm Wahlfieber...

PD - 32.4%
M5S - 15%
VTR (Monti) - 14.2%
PdL - 13.3%
SeL - 6.9%
LN - 4.5%
Others - 15%

It would have been nice if "Others" was broken down to see where UdC, IdV, etc. stand.

Wahlfieber isn't a poll though. It's the German version of Intrade.

Oops! It was listed in the polling section of the Wiki page. Someone might want to remove that...

Yeah, they should remove it. It's kinda strange that they think a German company would poll an Italian election ... Unless this Wahlfieber company actually did (?) Maybe they commissioned a poll ? I have to check this ... Do you have the link, Phil ?

It's a market.

And despite the website domain being registered in Germany, it's actually an Austrian company.

[minionofmidas]

Oh, the irony of Tender not knowing that it's an Austrian firm...

How would I know it if it was a ".de" domain in your link ?

It just goes to show how obscure this thing is.

It's 'ironic' (not really) because of your encyclopedic knowledge of American pollsters.

[minionofmidas]

Yikes. I didn't realize the Traitors got 21% in the region. That's alarming.

34%.

[minionofmidas]

Sardinia never got the kind of special election law deals that Aoste and Trentino-Südtirol have, and while nationalist parties run there, they don't poll anywhere near enough to matter except in a very close election.
Aoste's election will presumably be between two essentially independent candidates, one affiliated with Monti and the other with the PD, again.
Conservative as the SVP's rhetoric is, they're far too cautious to switch alliances at short notice and a PD government is the least unfriendly to autonomy government they can get. So allied to the PD they remain (I did actually check to verify this). What happens next time around should a Monti centre right bloc establish itself and look like it has staying power, though, is any one's guess.

[minionofmidas]

You can even stand in many constituencies at the same time (unless they changed the law in the last few years. Of course, I assume the PD's bylaws may ban it even if the law allows it.) But you cannot stand for the Camera and the Senate at the same time. That is verboten.

[minionofmidas]

You can even stand in many constituencies at the same time (unless they changed the law in the last few years. Of course, I assume the PD's bylaws may ban it even if the law allows it.) But you cannot stand for the Camera and the Senate at the same time. That is verboten.

Bersani is supposed to stand in Milan, Naples and Rome. I suppose Berlusconi will stand everywhere at the House.

I remember the time PdL and AN had joint lists and each got to top half of them... Berlusconi topped all the lists PdL was allowed to top (no IIRC - big if this - there was one exception), and didn't stand where he couldn't be no.1.

[minionofmidas]

Any candidate that stands in more than one constituency is surely a party leader

Of course.

[minionofmidas]

The Left claims Silvio Berlusconi is not stealing money from Italians? News to me.

[minionofmidas]

The Left claims Silvio Berlusconi is not stealing money from Italians? News to me.

You must be unfamiliar with the recent Berlusconi habit of making especially bizarre/contradictory statements.

No, I just stumbled on that line. My diagnosis from afar is Botox-induced Brain Poisoning.

[minionofmidas]

I suppose it's no accident that Rivoluzione Civile has the same initials as Rifondazione Comunista?

[minionofmidas]

Lega basically made it clear today they'll stand behind Berlusconi.

So hoping they'd go alone. (Which might actually have been the right choice to maximize their own vote... but with the law being what it is...)

[minionofmidas]

So is RC running as a single list? That's good.

[minionofmidas]

...I really hope the last comment was just a response to him being Berlusconi's Justice Minister and not blatantly Anti Sicilian...

It's possible that I was just trolling you. It has been known over the issue of inherent Sicilian criminality.

It's just inherent to Sicilian Conservatism post 1990.

[minionofmidas]

I don't know that I'm really concerned with M5S' showing here.   If Italians abroad are serious enough to go out of their way to vote, they probably won't be voting for a joke party.

Last I checked Berlusconi did win some abroad seats.

As long as the PD coalition is expected to win handily, 4% should not be that much of a hurdle for CR.

[minionofmidas]

PD is (probably) going to win anyways, and I'm not one to easily forgive the extortion attempt of 2008. Big artificial centre-"left" parties can go hang unless they're really, really needed to prevent the so much worse.
Which obviously means I also doubt SEL's judgment and/or integrity.


On a somewhat related question; are there any stated positions on what everyone wants to do with the election law?

[minionofmidas]

3. SEL's decision makes perfect sense, both in terms of electoral strategy (thresholds and all), and in terms of actual political influence (because being inside a governing coalition allows you to have leverage on policy, something RC won't have in any case).

Maybe Berlusconi can hold PD-SEL *just* short of a Senate majority.

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Who picked him as leaderface and why? I freely admit I hadn't followed developments since the last election.

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PD wants a French system (two-round single member), Renzi a little more emphatically so than Bersani, but both support it unequivocally. The Monti coalition says the current law sucks but hasn't said anything about what they want to do instead. My bet is that they'd love a "German" system (which would make it impossible for a coalition to rule alone). As for PdL, they have been very good at bullsh*tting about this for the past year or so, and what they would do is anyone's guess.
[/quote]SEL? RC? Does Beppe still want a return to personalized PR, I dimly recall him talking about how it's still actually in the Constitution - this being before he even founded his party?

Thanks for the help especially with the jinxing, Lewis!

I did say "probably". Obviously if things get real close again I'll hold my nose and support SEL.

[minionofmidas]

they will find a reason to grumble about whatever electoral reform is done.

And they won't have to look hard, it'll be elephant-sized.

[minionofmidas]

Antonio, you know me, you know I'm on the left side of the Front de gauche here in France, but that I would never vote for the NPA, and besides I profoundly and utterly despise the PD. So I'll let you pick my vote : SEL or RC ? I would be leaning RC right now for just exactly the same reasons as Lewis (actually I was about to write a post pretty much like his own).

So what shall it be ? And justify it !

We clearly need an M5S supporter to complete the triumvirate of supporters of non joke options.

[minionofmidas]

Another argument for SEL is of course that of electoral reform. The larger share of the Bersani-Coalition vote that SEL gets, the smaller the risk that PD has their own majority and push through a non-PR election system.*

*Of course this is only if you support Proportional Representation.     

That's an interesting angle I hadn't thought of, yeah.

[minionofmidas]

Another argument for SEL is of course that of electoral reform. The larger share of the Bersani-Coalition vote that SEL gets, the smaller the risk that PD has their own majority and push through a non-PR election system.*

*Of course this is only if you support Proportional Representation.     

That's an interesting angle I hadn't thought of, yeah.

PD won't win an absolute majority anyway. There aren't many outcomes you can safely exclude, but you can probably exclude this one.

Huh? If the coalition wins it gets 54% of the seats, even if it wins with 33% of the vote. If PD gets ~92% of the coalition votes, it gets a majority of the seats, even if that's on 30% of the vote, no?

[minionofmidas]

'twould take a mass bleeding specifically from SEL to RC. So yeah, I guess you're right. Maybe if they magically switched lead personnel.