Italian Elections and Politics 2018: Yellow Tide

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On Wikipedia you can find the map of the new electoral constituencies as established by the decrees implementing the electoral law.

[mappix]

On Wikipedia you can find the map of the new electoral constituencies as established by the decrees implementing the electoral law.

That is AWESOME news! I was actually looking for it for a while.
What article exactly?

It's in the Italian section of Wikipedia: Legge elettorale italiana del 2015 (scroll down the page to see it).
Sorry, I am not allowed to include links at the moment otherwise I would have posted it.

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Thank you very much!
And welcome to the forum, BTW.

Thanks!

Nice job; the next step would be to give a more detailed breakdown of the constituencies in the big cities.

If you are interested and have time you can check the Decreto Legislativo 7 agosto 2015, n. 122 on the Gazzetta Ufficiale website: it shows which old constituencies and municipalities form the new constituencies and there are maps of the old ones on the web (I found them on Google Images for cities like Milan and Turin).

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One question, I checked through the legislative decree and did indeed see the constituencies but not the number of deputies per plurinominal constituency, are those yet to be assigned? Or was it decided in a different decree? 

I have yet to find it out, from what I have read the seats are assigned first by circumscription (= region) and then divided among the single constituencies according to the population (for those regions with more than one constituency). Each plurinominal constituency elects deputies from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 9. The exceptions are the single-member constituencies in regions with linguistic minorities, Valle d'Aosta and Trentino Alto Adige.

These are the seats by circumscription, to be divided among their respective constituencies:

Piemonte                46
Valle d'Aosta              1
Lombardia             101
Trentino Alto Adige  11 (8 of which assigned with fptp + 3 with proportional bonus)
Veneto                    51
Friuli-Venezia Giulia 13
Liguria                    16
Emilia-Romagna      45
Toscana                  38
Umbria                     9
Marche                   16
Lazio                      57
Abruzzo                  14
Molise                       3
Campania               60
Puglia                     42
Basilicata                  6
Calabria                  20
Sicilia                      52
Sardegna                17
National Total        618

Abroad                     12
Total                      630

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You can check the turnout - and later the results on elezioni.interno.it by clicking on Affluenza&Risultati on that page. Sorry I cannot post links yet.
At the moment you can see the turnout by region, province and municipality by clicking on Italia.

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Was Renzi Prime Minister without holding a seat in either the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate?

If so, how was he able to function as Prime Minister without a seat in the Italian Parliament?

Unfortunately it is one of the many flaws of the Italian Constitution. It favors the imposition of Prime Ministers without a real popular consensus (Monti, Renzi as latest examples) and contributes to a drift between institutions and a disaffected electoral body, with the negative outcomes we have been experiencing during these years. Governments are not elected of course, but the 1994-2011 period was marked by the custom of governments reflecting a majority coalition chosen through elections. This custom has now gone, replaced by post-electoral coalitions between opposing parties, with the perception of being ruled by "unelected" majorities.

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It's not a matter of "custom", it's a matter of whether the electoral system you use allows you to actually form cohesive majorities. The system used from 1993 to 2005 made it possible, and Renzi's proposed electoral/constitutional reform would have restored that, but since the referendum failed and the Constitutional Court threw out the runoff provision in the Italicum, we're stuck with an unworkable mess of an electoral system that will guarantee permanent "grand" coalitions.

Well, custom is the original and historical source not only of law but also of social acceptance. The custom consisted in having PMs elected as members of parliament and governments reflecting majorities presented before voting and not post-electoral alliances among parties of opposing "blocks". When I try to explain post-vote coalitions are allowed, people feel they have been frauded, scammed by a dishonest alliance, hence the recurring raging phrase: "unelected government". Social (unwritten) acceptance is as important as written law when it comes to such important things as the legitimacy of a democratic practice/system, otherwise people turn to extremists or give up voting and reject the recognition of institutions and democracy altogether. It gets quite worrying.

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Ciampi and Dini were not members of parliament and Monti was not a elected members of parliament so there is not a so custom.
Governments reflected majorities presented before voting was occasionally and happened only in the 2001, 2006 and 2008.
The point it's the heavy propaganda in favour to the false custom, and the complete ignorance of large part of electorate

Voters may be ignorant, misinformed, but on election day they are always right, because that's how democracy works. The Dini cabinet, the Monti cabinet are affected by the same misperception because they came to power by substituting majorities that had previously come out of elections. My point is that perception is just as important as effective rules, because there will always be an emotional component to politics.

I hope to reach 20 posts so that I'll be allowed to post some maps.

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Questions for Italian posters:

* How likely is it that the Right Bloc will form a government with M5S after the election, if they fail to win a majority of seats on their own ? What are the other most likely coalitions then ?

* What are the positions of the major Italian parties (or what did their representatives say in recent days) about ÖVP/FPÖ's proposal to offer Austrian citizenship to South Tyrolians ? I know that the right-wing Fratelli d'Italia spoke out against it, but what about the Democratic Party, the M5S, Lega etc. ?

Thx.

Forza Italia is against the policies of M5S, as of now a coalition seems unlikely. The most likely coalition is rumored to be FI+PD+minor opportunistic parties.

Giving that the illegal immigrants crisis has brought the relations between Italy and Austria to a minimum point I am surprised that most parties did not seem to care about this issue when it broke out. Anyways most Italians are fed up with the privileges enjoyed by Alto Adige, even in off-topic matters like the shaping of new electoral constituencies, and would even gladly get rid of it.

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Will new electoral system help in consolidation of Italian political scene? I mean now we have a lot of neat electoral blocks without typical for Italy chaos so maybe it might evolve into something more (like permanent coalitions or sth)?

Italy has already had similar situations in previous elections, some parties/politicians break away from their bloc after elections if there's convenience so I don't expect any consolidation. Keep in mind that 32% of the deputies and 43% of the senators have changed sides in these last 5 years (source OpenPolis) with subsequent distrust from the electorate.

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Thanks.

Didn't know that Italians are fed up with South Tyrolian autonomy ...

They should actually be happy about it, because South Tyrol is the wealthiest and most advanced region in Italy because of that autonomy statute and they (together with Trient) are shoveling billions of €s in surplus money to Rome every year to prop up the weaker Center of Italy and especially the South.

The case you mentioned is a bit of a false myth really. These autonomous provinces manage to keep 90% of the taxes for themselves, and hostility comes a lot from Lombardy and Veneto, wealthy regions who have to contribute for a larger margin. Veneto especially has experienced the detachment of some municipalities that have joined the autonomous region of Friuli to get a better fiscal regime. The center of Italy is not that weak as well.

The fiscal reasons for hostility are mixed with historical reasons, as you probably know some South Tyroleans are hostile towards Italians for the forced annexation of their land after the Austrian defeat in WWI, the fascist prosecutions under Mussolini and some restrictions on cultural identity even in the after-war period. Some Italians are hostile towards South Tyroleans for the racist contempt they experience from them, the terrorist attacks that prompted the Democrazia Cristiana to grant an unprecedented autonomy to this province in order to make violence cease, and the fact that many terrorists are celebrated in local TVs and streets names as freedom fighters. I wonder what would happen if Italians celebrated fascist thugs in such ways. Some terrorists have escaped justice for the victims they made and are now living in Austria or Germany and are still involved in anti-Italian activities.

Having experienced this hostility on myself as a tourist there, but also having met lovely people from South Tyrol, I have to say the fiscal autonomy is partly put to very good use to provide excellent services, but also partly wasted in a very "Italian" way. Some separatist South Tyrolean politicians are even more Italian than they will ever admit . Examples of those "Italian political customs" are: the outrageous retributions of local politicians - the President of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen has a salary that matches the head of state's; the scandalous amount of local politicians' annuities despite recent cuts; the defense of those annuities, with a national debate sparkled when a South Tyrolean politician often contemptuous towards Italy, Eva Klotz - daughter of one of the aforementioned "freedom fighters" - defended her retribution funded not only by local but also national taxes; the practice of rigged public contracts to favor some local enterprises; the creation of useless administrative substructures for political reasons.

With a nationalist government in Austria I expect these local politicians to use the situation to get even more favorable deals, probably adding fuel to the fire.

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I also have to add that the issues of regional autonomies are a lot wider and the debate in Italy is not only focused on South Tyrol but also other regions.

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I also have to add that the issues of regional autonomies are a lot wider and the debate in Italy is not only focused on South Tyrol but also other regions.

Speaking of which; are Veneto and Lombardy still trying to push for their own autonomy? Or were the referendums last October as pointless as they seemed?

I have not seen any progress at the moment, perhaps this issue will be discussed by the new government. I know that Piedmont too wanted to have talks with the government about more autonomy.

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These are the definitive constituencies for 37% of the parliamentary seats elected using the FPTP system

for the Chamber of Deputies


for the Senate

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Someones has how many deputies and senators will be elected for each plurinominal college?

https://infogram.com/collegi-rosatellum-1gk92e7x0k37p16 (scroll down)

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Mappix i want help you to get the map quorum.
The elections of representation is only a small part how democracy works and imo is not a compulsory part, and the only elections of representation is away from a democracy.
There was not a majority come out of elections in 1994.
Pereception is important because can be easily manipulated todays more that same time ago

I did not notice at first, but what do you mean when you say elections are not compulsory?

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A lot of what you say is true of course, but the Italian discontent seems to be based on historic developments that are pretty meaningless right now (such as the - understandable* - terrorist/FF actions by South Tyrolians) and also some kind of envy economically and financially. While you are right that - in theory - 90% of taxes remain in the autnomous regions, in practice this is often not the case as Rome takes some 50 years to repay the taxes they are collecting from these wealthy regions. Besides, South Tyrol and Co. have much larger regional budgets than other Italian regions and therefore pay a lot more taxes to Rome per capita. Previous Italian governments often sought to milk the richer regions, because Rome is extremely incompetent and wasteful itself when it comes to money.

*understandable, that in a sense the Allied Forces were extremely stupid to award South Tyrol to Italy after WW1. A region that was 95% Tyrolian and part of Tyrol and a different culture and language in general. Just another example how stupid politicians can be, as they do not understand the situation on the ground and like to look at maps and tear peoples apart. Besides, Italy used to brutally colonize and Italianize South Tyrol after 1918, committing many human rights abuses in the population. Which of course led to resistance and "terrorism" (I'm leaning more towards FFs). Still, this is a thing of the past and the autonomy statutes today are an example for other regions in the World such as Catalonia. If you allow them to have greater autonomy, the chances are higher that the money is spent wisely on the regional level rather than being wasted in an inefficient and corrupt way - like in Rome. Rome could learn a thing or two from South Tyrol, especially on the economy, school system, public transport, the environment and unemployment.

As for autonomy, if I remember correctly, South Tyrol enjoys a larger power by being an autonomous province within Italy and would probably have a reduced status as an Austrian Land. But as I said previously, reading the comments here and there - mostly on social media or newspapers - about this issue, some Italians are inclined to say goodbye to Alto Adige/South Tyrol just to avoid listening to any further polemics about taxation, oppression, racial differences, superiority vs inefficiency and so on.

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the elections of representation are not a compulsory part of democracy, it can be a democracy w/o elections of representation (representation as is commonly understood)

I might have missed some part but I was talking about a representative democracy whose core is based on free elections.

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Can you link to more detailed versions if they exist? Wouldn't mind doing a larger one with insets for urban areas if possible...

No unfortunately. I have just this link for the constituencies of the chamber of deputies
http://documenti.camera.it/Leg17/Dossier/Pdf/AC0760A.Pdf

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If you want to know more about the electoral law, the constituencies and the possible outcomes there's a specific website where you can register: http://rosatellum.info/

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Here's another website forecasting the possible outcomes for the fptp constituencies: http://www.duetredue.org/

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http://documenti.camera.it/Leg17/Dossier/Pdf/AC0760A.Pdf

Comparing this document with the constituencies from the Gazzetta Ufficiale it seems that they made some minor changes https://tinyurl.com/yd93om6a (pdf)

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Clickable maps showing the winners of the FPTP constituencies (and largest party/coalition by region):
http://tg24.sky.it/speciali/elezioni/italia/politiche/mappa-elezioni-2018-collegi-uninominali.html
(click on collegi to see the constituencies)

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YouTrend published this analysis: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sm30c8m96cio3qe/Dossier%20Politiche%202018.pdf?dl=0