MAP: How Italy turned 'blue' in Sunday's historic elections
After Italy's right-wing alliance won a big majority in Italy's elections, maps show how the vote went in their favour across almost all parts of the country.
Italy's right-wing centrodestra coalition - led by the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, the populist League, and Berlusconi's Forza Italia - is set to form Italy's next government, having swept to victory in elections on Sunday.
Taking almost 44 percent of the vote, the alliance is more than 18 percentage points ahead of its nearest rivals, the centre-left centrosinistra coalition, and will have a clear-cut majority in parliament.
READ ALSO: Triumph for Giorgia Meloni's far-right party as Italy gets final election result
While Brothers of Italy and the League (formerly the Northern League) have their heartlands in northern Italy, they took seats almost everywhere in the country - in contrast to the north-south divide seen in 2018's election result.
As various election result maps show, most of Italy is now 'blue' (the traditional colour of the right).
Nelle nostre mappe degli uninominali su @SkyTG24 questi sono gli schieramenti a ora in testa (scrutinio non ancora ultimato):
- CDX: 60 Senato + 122 Camera
- CSX: 7 Senato + 12 Camera
- M5S 4 Senato + 10 Camera
- SVP: 2 Senato + 2 Camera
- Sud Chiama Nord: 1 Senato + 1 Camera pic.twitter.com/HCfcx7c7ua
— YouTrend (@you_trend) September 26, 2022
To get the most out of these visualisations, it helps to have a basic understanding of Italy's notoriously complicated political system, so here's a quick primer.
In a general election Italians get two votes, one for the senate and one for the lower house, and can vote for different parties in each if they wish.
Italy also has a fiendishly complicated hybrid voting system: about 37 percent of seats in both houses of parliament are allocated in a first-past-the-post vote in single-member constituencies, while the rest are elected by proportional representation via party lists of candidates.
That means some seats will be filled by candidates directly elected to represent their local constituency (i.e., the candidate with the most votes wins outright), with the rest divided proportionally between each party depending on their performance (i.e., a party with 20 percent of the votes gets 20 percent of the seats). Got that?
In these SkyTG24 live election result visualisations, the maps under the Circoscrizioni tab represent the results (so far) for proportional representation votes, while the maps under the Collegi tab show the results for first-past-the-post votes.
In the maps embedded above from Youtrend showing first-past-the-post results for the lower house (on the left) and the senate (on the right) on Monday morning, you can see that the majority of the country voted for the hard-right centrodestra coalition, shown in blue.
Just a few pockets in Emilia Romagna and Tuscany and in the north around Milan, Bolzano and Turin voted for the centre-left (red), with small areas of Campania, Puglia and Calabria voting for the populist Movimento 5 Stelle (yellow).
The maps for proportional representation are even more stark; here only a small electoral district around Naples is 'yellow', with the entire rest of the country turning blue.
Other visualisations also offer striking representations of Italy's latest general election results.
Here you can see the distribution of votes for the right (on the left, in blue) versus the centre-left (right, in red):
La distribuzione geografica del voto, a partire da quella delle due principali coalizioni#MaratonaYouTrend #ElezioniPolitiche2022 pic.twitter.com/oOcqbBIrwr
— YouTrend (@you_trend) September 26, 2022
And here is the difference in the distribution of votes received by Brothers of Italy in 2018 (when it won just four percent of the vote) versus 2022, when the party is set to win 26 percent:
Why did this happen? While it may look as though Italy has taken a sharp turn to the right, political analysts say strong support for the right in Italy has always been there, but was previously split.
Data shows Meloni likely drew much of her recent surge in support from Italy’s other right-wing parties, particularly the League, while many right-leaning supporters of Italy's populist Five Star Movement also voted for the right-wing coalition this time.
A poor turnout in the south (and the lowest turnout historically in Italian election history) and the centre-left's failure to form a strong coalition to fight the election is also thought to have contributed to the right's landslide win.
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Italy's right-wing centrodestra coalition - led by the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, the populist League, and Berlusconi's Forza Italia - is set to form Italy's next government, having swept to victory in elections on Sunday.
Taking almost 44 percent of the vote, the alliance is more than 18 percentage points ahead of its nearest rivals, the centre-left centrosinistra coalition, and will have a clear-cut majority in parliament.
READ ALSO: Triumph for Giorgia Meloni's far-right party as Italy gets final election result
While Brothers of Italy and the League (formerly the Northern League) have their heartlands in northern Italy, they took seats almost everywhere in the country - in contrast to the north-south divide seen in 2018's election result.
As various election result maps show, most of Italy is now 'blue' (the traditional colour of the right).
Nelle nostre mappe degli uninominali su @SkyTG24 questi sono gli schieramenti a ora in testa (scrutinio non ancora ultimato):
— YouTrend (@you_trend) September 26, 2022
- CDX: 60 Senato + 122 Camera
- CSX: 7 Senato + 12 Camera
- M5S 4 Senato + 10 Camera
- SVP: 2 Senato + 2 Camera
- Sud Chiama Nord: 1 Senato + 1 Camera pic.twitter.com/HCfcx7c7ua
To get the most out of these visualisations, it helps to have a basic understanding of Italy's notoriously complicated political system, so here's a quick primer.
In a general election Italians get two votes, one for the senate and one for the lower house, and can vote for different parties in each if they wish.
Italy also has a fiendishly complicated hybrid voting system: about 37 percent of seats in both houses of parliament are allocated in a first-past-the-post vote in single-member constituencies, while the rest are elected by proportional representation via party lists of candidates.
That means some seats will be filled by candidates directly elected to represent their local constituency (i.e., the candidate with the most votes wins outright), with the rest divided proportionally between each party depending on their performance (i.e., a party with 20 percent of the votes gets 20 percent of the seats). Got that?
In these SkyTG24 live election result visualisations, the maps under the Circoscrizioni tab represent the results (so far) for proportional representation votes, while the maps under the Collegi tab show the results for first-past-the-post votes.
In the maps embedded above from Youtrend showing first-past-the-post results for the lower house (on the left) and the senate (on the right) on Monday morning, you can see that the majority of the country voted for the hard-right centrodestra coalition, shown in blue.
Just a few pockets in Emilia Romagna and Tuscany and in the north around Milan, Bolzano and Turin voted for the centre-left (red), with small areas of Campania, Puglia and Calabria voting for the populist Movimento 5 Stelle (yellow).
The maps for proportional representation are even more stark; here only a small electoral district around Naples is 'yellow', with the entire rest of the country turning blue.
Other visualisations also offer striking representations of Italy's latest general election results.
Here you can see the distribution of votes for the right (on the left, in blue) versus the centre-left (right, in red):
La distribuzione geografica del voto, a partire da quella delle due principali coalizioni#MaratonaYouTrend #ElezioniPolitiche2022 pic.twitter.com/oOcqbBIrwr
— YouTrend (@you_trend) September 26, 2022
And here is the difference in the distribution of votes received by Brothers of Italy in 2018 (when it won just four percent of the vote) versus 2022, when the party is set to win 26 percent:
Why did this happen? While it may look as though Italy has taken a sharp turn to the right, political analysts say strong support for the right in Italy has always been there, but was previously split.
Data shows Meloni likely drew much of her recent surge in support from Italy’s other right-wing parties, particularly the League, while many right-leaning supporters of Italy's populist Five Star Movement also voted for the right-wing coalition this time.
A poor turnout in the south (and the lowest turnout historically in Italian election history) and the centre-left's failure to form a strong coalition to fight the election is also thought to have contributed to the right's landslide win.
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