Salvini’s success and the collapse of the Five-star Movement: The European elections of 2019

ABSTRACT

The European Parliament elections of 2019 in Italy can be considered as a crucial turning point for the national political system. Indeed, both the balance of power among parties and the governmental dynamics were deeply affected by the outcome of the 2019 elections. In a context of notable electoral instability, an almost perfect turnaround among the two partners of the so-called yellow-green majority occurred: Matteo Salvini’s League doubled its vote share compared to the 2018 parliamentary elections, while the Five-star Movement halved its support. By revealing the asymmetry in the distribution of power in Parliament and in the electorate between the two governing partners, the election outcome marked the beginning of the end for the first Conte government. It eventually led to the unexpected reconciliation between the M5s and the Democratic Party, which in turn resulted in the formation of the second Conte government at the end of the summer. This article analyses the outcome of the European Parliament elections of 2019 in Italy. In particular, it focuses on the context of the electoral campaign and trends in public opinion, the election results in terms of turnout and party support, and the vote shifts experienced by the main parties between 2018 and 2019. Finally, the article also discusses the implications of the election outcome for the evolution of the Italian party system

KEYWORDS:

• 2019 European elections
• Italy
• league
• Five-star Movement
• vote shifts
• Conte government

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Osservatorio sulla Comunicazione Pubblica e Politica dell’Università di Torino, La campagna elettorale e il consumo mediale, in Elezioni europee 2019: media, elettori, risultati. Le scelte di voto e la copertura mediatica della campagna elettorale per il Parlamento europeo, edited by the Dipartimento di Culture Politica e Società (University of Turin), Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche (University of Milan), Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali Politiche e Cognitive (University of Siena), https://www.dcps.unito.it/do/home.pl/View?doc=elezioni_UE_2019.html, 2019, accessed, 5 January 2019.

2. The situation was different as far as the legacy media were concerned. Newspaper front pages and news broadcast headlines made reference to the EU in about a third of the cases.

3. For the concept of issue yield, see De Sio (2017). For an application to the Italian parliamentary election of 2018, see Emanuele, Maggini, and Paparo (2019).

4. The subdivision of the national territory into five constituencies is relevant only for the purposes of candidate nomination but not for the purposes of the assignment of seats, which takes place through a single college covering the whole of the national territory.

5. This expression is used to refer to ‘the departure from the electorate of older cohorts of electors – among which turnout was high – and the simultaneous arrival of younger cohorts – among which turnout is much lower’ (Chiaramonte and Paparo 2019, 271).

6. The relatively low turnout in the South (as compared to the central and northern regions) at the European elections is also due, at least in part, to the fact that most of the local-council elections were held in the central and northern regions. Thus, elections were held in only one quarter of the municipalities in the South, whereas in the North and in the ‘red belt’ the proportions were 60% and 70% respectively (Angelucci and Maggini 2019; Vittori and Paparo, 2019).

7. The index of electoral volatility for the pair of elections in 2014 and 2019 was 37.25. Following 2014, when the index had been 36.6, 2019 was the second consecutive election at which a very high level of electoral instability was recorded (see Emanuele et al., 2019).

8. In particular, an analysis carried out immediately after the vote shows that support for the Movement held up only in those provinces with the greatest social-welfare needs. The study shows, in fact, that the provinces with the highest concentrations of applications for the citizens’ income were also those where support for the M5s was most concentrated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Chiaramonte

Alessandro Chiaramonte is Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Florence, where he currently teaches Italian Politics and Elections, Parties and Public Opinion. He has published books and articles on elections, electoral systems and party systems. More specifically, his research interests have focused on the functioning and the effects of various types of electoral systems, especially mixed majoritarian-proportional systems, on the comparative change of parties and party systems, and on the long-lasting electoral transition of the Italian party and political system, analysed from both a national and a regional perspective.

Lorenzo De Sio

Lorenzo De Sio is Professor of Political Science at the LUISS Guido Carli University, and the director of the CISE research centre (Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali). Formerly Visiting Research Fellow at UC Irvine, Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute and Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University, he has participated in several international research projects, among which ‘The True European Voter’, the ‘EU Profiler’ (2009) and EUandi(2014). A member of the board of ITANES (Italian National Election Studies), he recently directed the international Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP).

Among his publications, beyond monographs and edited books in Italian and English, are articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Political Psychology, West European Politics, South European Society and Politics, and all the major Italian political science journals.

Vincenzo Emanuele

Vincenzo Emanuele is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Luiss, Rome. He is Co-Chair of the Research Network on Political Parties, Party Systems and Elections of the Council of Europe. His research, focusing mainly on elections and party system change, has appeared in – among others – Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Party Politics, Government and Opposition, and South European Society and Politics. His monograph, Cleavages, institutions, and competition. Understanding vote nationalization in Western Europe (1965–2015), was published by Rowman & Littlefield/ECPR Press.