Elections in Italy: Rome’s mayor voted out

The citizens of Rome, the capital of Italy, vote for their mayor. Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Movement, who was voted Rome’s first lady in 2016, only finished third. She pays for her meager balance sheet with the city administration, especially as the garbage issue remains unresolved.

The next mayor will be decided only in the second round between centre-right candidate Enrico Michetti and his Social Democratic rival, former finance minister Roberto Gualtieri, who is now considered the favourite.

The Social Democrats celebrated the success of the Italian local elections in the major cities. In Milan, centre-left candidate Giuseppe Sala prevailed with an absolute majority in the first ballot, as the count showed. The former manager gathers behind him all the progressive forces.

Gaetano Manfredi, the former research minister, was also elected in the first round in Naples. He could count on the support of the Social Democrats and Five Star. The two parties were originally supposed to form an alliance in several elections, but failed to identify joint applicants.

Leftist candidate Matteo Lepore was elected in Bologna. In Turin, centre-left candidate Stefano Lo Russo is ahead of his centre-right rival, but has to go to the runoff in two weeks. His rival, the entrepreneur Paolo Damilano, tries to present himself to voters as a moderate, although he was supported by the right-wing extremist parties Lega and Fratelli d’Italia.

In Calabria, the right won regional elections. Roberto Occhiuto, the former parliamentary group leader of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, benefited from the fact that the left split into three camps and sent three applicants to the election: they blocked each other. Berlusconi is likely to see this success as a sign that the extreme lines of his allies Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni flopped in these elections.

Former Prime Minister Enrico Letta also celebrated a personal success in Tuscany: the party leader of the Social Democrats won a seat in parliament in an unscheduled election in Siena and is returning to the Chamber of Deputies after a six-year break.