Italy's left-wing Democratic Party elects first woman leader
In a surprise result, Italy's opposition centre-left Democratic Party (PD) picked Elly Schlein, a 37-year-old US-Italian national who grew up in Switzerland, to be its new leader and challenge the ruling conservative coalition.
Italy's Democratic Party (PD) elected its first woman leader at the weekend, charged with re-energizing the centre-left party to counter a recent surge in popularity of the right.
Parliamentarian Elly Schlein, 37, defeated frontrunner Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia-Romagna region, by 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent Sunday, in an election that saw most left-leaning voters stay at home.
Schlein becomes the youngest-ever leader of the progressive, pro-Europe party, which many political experts have seen as suffering from an identity crisis amid the increasing popularity of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party.
#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/z0DL9PMT11
— Elly Schlein (@ellyesse) January 30, 2023
Ahead of official figures, the PD estimated that around one million supporters took part in the primaries, meaning Sunday's election had the worst-ever abstention rate of internal PD elections.
Schlein succeeds Enrico Letta, a former prime minister, the head of the party since March 2021 who resigned after general elections in September brought Meloni and her right-wing coalition an easy victory.
The PD, hurt by a divided left and a negative election campaign that failed to inspire voters, won just 19 percent of the vote in the general election versus 26 percent for the Brothers of Italy.
READ ALSO: Political cheat sheet: What to know about Italy’s Democratic Party
The PD currently stands at 16.9 percent of voting intentions, far behind Brothers of Italy at 31.1 percent and just below the anti-establishment Five Star Movement at 17.2 percent, according to an ixé poll conducted from 15 to 21 February.
Born in Lugano, Switzerland within the country's Italian-speaking region, Schlein's father is American with Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. Her mother is Italian.
With a law degree from the University of Bologna, she left Italy in 2008 to work on former US President Barack Obama's election campaign and later his re-election campaign.
Elected into the European Parliament in 2014, she became vice-president of the Emilia-Romagna region in 2020 before entering Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, in 2022.
Schlein rarely talks about her private life, but in an interview in 2020 she said she was bisexual and in a relationship with a woman.
The left-wing Domani daily wrote Monday that Schlein offered "a model of feminine leadership radically different to that of Giorgia Meloni", who defined herself during her general election campaign as a conservative “Christian mother”.
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Italy's Democratic Party (PD) elected its first woman leader at the weekend, charged with re-energizing the centre-left party to counter a recent surge in popularity of the right.
Parliamentarian Elly Schlein, 37, defeated frontrunner Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia-Romagna region, by 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent Sunday, in an election that saw most left-leaning voters stay at home.
Schlein becomes the youngest-ever leader of the progressive, pro-Europe party, which many political experts have seen as suffering from an identity crisis amid the increasing popularity of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party.
#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/z0DL9PMT11
— Elly Schlein (@ellyesse) January 30, 2023
Ahead of official figures, the PD estimated that around one million supporters took part in the primaries, meaning Sunday's election had the worst-ever abstention rate of internal PD elections.
Schlein succeeds Enrico Letta, a former prime minister, the head of the party since March 2021 who resigned after general elections in September brought Meloni and her right-wing coalition an easy victory.
The PD, hurt by a divided left and a negative election campaign that failed to inspire voters, won just 19 percent of the vote in the general election versus 26 percent for the Brothers of Italy.
READ ALSO: Political cheat sheet: What to know about Italy’s Democratic Party
The PD currently stands at 16.9 percent of voting intentions, far behind Brothers of Italy at 31.1 percent and just below the anti-establishment Five Star Movement at 17.2 percent, according to an ixé poll conducted from 15 to 21 February.
Born in Lugano, Switzerland within the country's Italian-speaking region, Schlein's father is American with Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. Her mother is Italian.
With a law degree from the University of Bologna, she left Italy in 2008 to work on former US President Barack Obama's election campaign and later his re-election campaign.
Elected into the European Parliament in 2014, she became vice-president of the Emilia-Romagna region in 2020 before entering Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, in 2022.
Schlein rarely talks about her private life, but in an interview in 2020 she said she was bisexual and in a relationship with a woman.
The left-wing Domani daily wrote Monday that Schlein offered "a model of feminine leadership radically different to that of Giorgia Meloni", who defined herself during her general election campaign as a conservative “Christian mother”.
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