The victory of the Italian centre-right alliance in the snap general elections on Sunday turned out to be less clear than the pollsters had predicted.

As expected, the alliance of Italy's right-wing conservative brothers under Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini's right-wing national Lega and Silvio Berlusconi's Christian-democratic Forza Italia should achieve an absolute majority of seats in both chambers of parliament.

The appointment of Giorgia Meloni as the new Prime Minister by President Sergio Mattarella is also considered likely.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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However, the parties in the centre-right alliance are likely to be a long way from the hoped-for two-thirds majority of mandates in both chambers, with which the new government could have changed the constitution.

Giorgia Meloni emerged from the elections as the clear winner within Allianz.

Former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, as party leader of the Lega, has to answer for a weaker result than in the 2018 elections.

The decline of Forza Italia under party founder Silvio Berlusconi continues.

A debate could develop in the Lega about the future leadership of the party.

Berlusconi shouldn't be able to delay handing over the party leadership much longer either.

Reversal of the negative trend

The social democratic party leader Enrico Letta must be seen as a winner and a loser at the same time.

Although the party was able to slightly improve its share of the vote compared to the 2018 elections, the Social Democrats are the second strongest political force and leader of the opposition after the Italian brothers.

But in an electoral alliance with the left-wing populist Five Star Movement, the Social Democrats even had a chance of winning the election.

Letta had not succeeded in forging the desired broad alliance on the left.

Although former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, as the new party leader of the Five Stars, was only able to get about half as many votes as the left-wing populist movement won in its election triumph in March 2018, he can count himself among the election winners.

Because Conte managed to reverse the negative trend for the Five Stars, which he made with a clear left-wing and pacifist orientation to the third strongest political force after the Italian brothers and the Social Democrats.

Together, the left parties and the new “third pole” would have been as strong or even stronger than the center-right alliance.

The victory of the right in the individual constituencies, in which the Social Democrats and Five Stars competed against each other, was decisive for the outcome of the election.

The liberal alliance Azione of Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda, which is trying to establish itself as a "third pole" in the middle between the left and the right, achieved respectable success.

The Greens remain weak in Italy, and Emma Bonino's More Europe party is also making no headway.

The Italexit party, which is striving for Italy to leave the EU, has not managed to get over the three percent hurdle into parliament.

Right-wing extremist and neo-fascist parties also play no role.

The further decline in voter turnout by around ten points compared to 2018 to just around 65 percent is frightening.

However, none of the political camps seems to have benefited in any particular way from the alarmingly high abstention rate.

With around 35 percent, the “Party of Non-Voters” is the strongest political force in the country by a good ten points.