Italian Local Elections 2011

[SPQR]

So far,amazing elections.
I won't comment on the big cities since everyone knows the results (PdL'scurrent mayor at 41% in Milan! PD getting more votes than PdL!!!!), but PdL+Lega are also losing a lot of small towns in the "deep North",like Veneto and Lombardia,where they used to win with ridicolous results.
Anyway,the decisive battle will be in 2 weeks.

[SPQR]

Center-left wins Milan with 55% and Naples with 65%!
Also wins in plenty of other cities such as Trieste and Cagliari (where there have been center-right mayors since after WW2)
This is incredible!!!

[SPQR]

wasn't naples supposed to be close? I know it's a very liberal city, but the right was overperfoming there, am I right??

Naples isn't any more liberal than any other big city.
And recently the center-right was winning handily (last year they won the Province with more than 60% of the vote) both there and in the whole region.

To win,and to win with 65%,is something absolutely amazing. I'm gonna go celebrate in a couple of hours

[SPQR]

Only sad news is that the PD is still a joke and Bersani has the charisma of a wet pizza. But who cares ? The left has proven it can win (and win even better) without the PD's lead.

PD's campaign was really good in my opinion,and while Bersani is not charismatic,he is really competent (and I didn't vote for him in the primary)
Now I'll really go out and celebrate

[SPQR]

Italian politics since 1994 have been exclusively about Berlusconi, which is a very sad thing because it led the left to think it could win without talking about substance (it did win, twice, but it didn't last). But this seems to be slowly changing.

I hope so; it was rather disappointing when I was there, it seemed like it was all about Berlusconi/contra Berlusconi.  There was discussion of issues, but some of it was so far afield (like a fixation on nuclear power) that the issues seemed disconnected from elections altogether.  There was virtually no discussion of economics whatsoever, which fits the current state of Italian debt.  (I had to come home to the US to hear about Italian economic strategies.)

I'm disappointed in Italy's right particularly, as the fixation on Berlusconi gives me the Mussolini heebie-jeebies and their platform can be rather incoherent at times.  It's a shame, because they seem to have some decent ministers, but they're just left with a series of Italian Idol elections.

Berlusconi is used as an alibi not to face the important issues you name: even when conservative reform like the university and school reform and the cut of fiscal spending that has been done, the opposition approached them not as a normal opposition contrasting conservative measures, but in the same Berlusconi yes/Berlusocni no pattern.
Yet different position exist, and like in the rest of Europe, the right is in favour and implemented measures like spending cuts (as Cameron i.e),  later retirement reforms, introduction of private subjects in universities, cuts of public employment. Not surprisingly the electoral distribution of votes is very similar to the one of the other countries in the western world, with the right voted more in the countryside, and by little retailers, little entreupeneurs, religious people, etc, so the argument that "there's no right and no left" and just "honest people from right and left" against Berlusconi is just a propaganda argument, that can be legitimate, ma not serious, surely, and is very often just functional to the purpose of not approaching real economic problems.

The same real economic problems that Berlusconi has been ignoring for the last years?
Oh yes,ecause surely Italy's problem is the "communist judges' dictatorship". Let's bring the country forward with a new judicial reform! Which is like the 15th announced reform of this kind since 1994,how odd.
If Berlusconi had spent 1/100th of the time he has spent on laws ad personam on laws concerning the economy,maybe Italy would be in a better position worldwide.
Don't try and say that PdL is just like any other right-wing party,it's not. It's a coalition made up of clowns who have to accept anything that Berlusconi orders,or they are out (Fini and FLI). They have no ideology;surely not the "European Liberal" one that Berlusconi has been trying to attach to himself,since he is the biggest protector of the lobbies in Italy.

[SPQR]

Italian politics since 1994 have been exclusively about Berlusconi, which is a very sad thing because it led the left to think it could win without talking about substance (it did win, twice, but it didn't last). But this seems to be slowly changing.

I hope so; it was rather disappointing when I was there, it seemed like it was all about Berlusconi/contra Berlusconi.  There was discussion of issues, but some of it was so far afield (like a fixation on nuclear power) that the issues seemed disconnected from elections altogether.  There was virtually no discussion of economics whatsoever, which fits the current state of Italian debt.  (I had to come home to the US to hear about Italian economic strategies.)

I'm disappointed in Italy's right particularly, as the fixation on Berlusconi gives me the Mussolini heebie-jeebies and their platform can be rather incoherent at times.  It's a shame, because they seem to have some decent ministers, but they're just left with a series of Italian Idol elections.

Berlusconi is used as an alibi not to face the important issues you name: even when conservative reform like the university and school reform and the cut of fiscal spending that has been done, the opposition approached them not as a normal opposition contrasting conservative measures, but in the same Berlusconi yes/Berlusocni no pattern.
Yet different position exist, and like in the rest of Europe, the right is in favour and implemented measures like spending cuts (as Cameron i.e),  later retirement reforms, introduction of private subjects in universities, cuts of public employment. Not surprisingly the electoral distribution of votes is very similar to the one of the other countries in the western world, with the right voted more in the countryside, and by little retailers, little entreupeneurs, religious people, etc, so the argument that "there's no right and no left" and just "honest people from right and left" against Berlusconi is just a propaganda argument, that can be legitimate, ma not serious, surely, and is very often just functional to the purpose of not approaching real economic problems.

The same real economic problems that Berlusconi has been ignoring for the last years?
Oh yes,ecause surely Italy's problem is the "communist judges' dictatorship". Let's bring the country forward with a new judicial reform! Which is like the 15th announced reform of this kind since 1994,how odd.
If Berlusconi had spent 1/100th of the time he has spent on laws ad personam on laws concerning the economy,maybe Italy would be in a better position worldwide.
Don't try and say that PdL is just like any other right-wing party,it's not. It's a coalition made up of clowns who have to accept anything that Berlusconi orders,or they are out (Fini and FLI). They have no ideology;surely not the "European Liberal" one that Berlusconi has been trying to attach to himself,since he is the biggest protector of the lobbies in Italy.

PDL is what electorate decides it is, and not casually the electorate profile is exactly the same of the center-right conservative electorate all over Europe.

Media's power is much stronger on those groups,clearly.

[SPQR]

Any chance anyone has current polling for Italy?

http://www.termometropolitico.it/media-sondaggi-al-9-ottobre/
In the meanwhile,they are counting the votes in Molise (tiny region),where the PdL candidate was a quite popular incumbent.
With 88% of the votes in,he is losing by 0,01%...he was expected to win quite handily,also because he had the support of UdC (which is really strong in this region).