Italy saw a swing to the right on Sunday but no political landslide.

According to partial counts on Monday morning, 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 won a cumulative 44 to 46 percent of the vote.

Matthias Rub

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

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The Social Democrats under Enrico Letta with around 20 percent and the left-wing populist Five Star Movement with its new party leader Giuseppe Conte with around 15 percent together achieve 35 percent.

However, the two key forces on the left ran separately and fought each other for direct mandates in the individual constituencies.

The “third pole” of Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda, who for the first time expressly appeared as a liberal force of the political center, achieved a respectable result with a good seven percent.

Mathematically, a center-left coalition, including other small parties, would have around 46 percent of the voters behind it.

If the new Liberals decided to join forces with the victorious right-wing alliance, the centre-right camp would also have an absolute majority in the electorate.

Clear majority thanks to the electoral law

However, the legal alliance of the Brothers of Italy, Lega and Forza Italia, also achieved the absolute majority of the mandates in both chambers of parliament with the relative majority of votes.

The alliance owes this victory, which resulted in a clear mandate to form a government under Giorgia Meloni as party leader of the strongest political force (Italian Brothers with 25 to 26 percent of the votes), to the electoral law.

It consists of elements of majority and proportional representation and favors party alliances over individual parties in the individual constituencies in which around a third of the mandates of both chambers are awarded after the majority election.

Meloni, the clear winner of the elections, laid claim to forming a government early on Monday morning.

The left recognized their electoral defeat, the Social Democrats and Five Stars will be sitting on the opposition bench in the future.

It is considered likely that President Sergio Mattarella will soon give Giorgia Meloni the government contract.

The 45-year-old Roman would be the first woman to hold the highest government office in the history of the Republic of Italy.

Serious setbacks for Berlusconi and Salvini

Meloni spoke of a "night of pride and redemption" at her party's election party at the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome early Monday morning.

She said to her followers that one was not at the place of arrival, but at the place of departure.

Now unity is needed to tackle the many problems in the country: "If we are called to govern this nation, we will do so for all Italians with the aim of uniting the people, promoting what unites and not what divides .” The trust of the voters will not be abused.

In the centre-right alliance, both Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi have suffered serious setbacks for their parties.

The Lega comes to around nine percent, in 2018 they had received 17 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections and in the 2019 European elections they reached a peak of 34 percent.

Party leader Salvini's position in the Lega is considered endangered.

Berlusconi's Forza Italia comes to around eight percent, a drop of a further six percentage points compared to the 2018 elections. Berlusconi made it into the Senate in the single constituency of Monza, from which he was expelled nine years ago because of a final conviction for tax evasion.

The Five Star Movement, which triumphed in the 2018 elections with almost 33 percent and has since been involved in all governments in Rome, was pleased with the surprising third place despite bitter losses of around 18 percentage points.

"We were declared dead, but we are the third strongest party in the country," said Michele Gubitosa, one of the Five Stars' deputy leaders.

Above all, the Five Stars were able to defend their strongholds in the south.

There, an above-average number of needy people and poor families benefit from the basic income introduced in 2019 on the initiative of the five stars.

Voter turnout hit new low

Participation in the parliamentary elections reached an all-time low: According to the Ministry of the Interior, only around 64 percent of those entitled to vote cast their votes.

That was ten percentage points less than in the last parliamentary elections in March 2018, when a historic low had also been reached.

In southern Italy in particular, voters stayed away from the polling stations.

The newly elected parliament will hold its constituent session on October 13.

Consultations on forming a government are expected to begin later this week.

The Vice President of the European Parliament Katarina Barely (SPD) described Meloni's victory on Monday morning as "worrying".

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, on the other hand, immediately congratulated Meloni.

"More than ever we need friends who share a vision of Europe and a common approach to Europe," said Viktor Orbán's political director, MP Balázs Orbán (unrelated to the prime minister).