Electoral law: Meloni is aiming for a ‘strategic vote’, whilst Schlein seeks to fend off Conte’s takeover bid for the PD

The electoral reform drawn up by the centre-right and opposed by the entire broad coalition – whether you call it ‘Stabilicum’ or ‘Melonellum’ – is heading to a Chamber of Deputies that is heavily guarded. Indeed, extremely heavily guarded. The government has already called for a vote of confidence on the two articles of the bill, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made her position clear: if, during the two secret ballots – the first on the preliminary rulings on constitutionality and the final one on the text itself – anyone were to try and pull a ‘stunt’, the country would head straight to the polls. And the election would be held under the current voting system, the Rosatellum, which for the centre-right would mean certain defeat or, at best, a draw – and thus a ‘stalemate’: the presence of Roberto Vannacci’s Futuro Nazionale could, in fact, ‘hand’ even the single-member constituencies currently considered safe to the now-united opposition, overturning the 2022 result. And, above all, there would be another election before first-term MPs become eligible for a pension (the deadline is between late March and early April 2027).

Full steam ahead, then, with the ‘tactical voting’ strategy to try to stem the rise of Roberto Vannacci’s party (‘if you vote for him, the left will win’) in the hope of exceeding the 42 per cent threshold that triggers the majority bonus. This bonus, as desired by the Lega – which hopes in this way to compensate for the loss in the North of the single-member constituencies under the Rosatellum – is allocated not as a percentage but through fixed coalition lists of 70 MPs and 35 senators, up to a ceiling of 220 MPs and 113 senators (between 55 and 57 per cent of the seats). But for Meloni, this is a gamble that remains to be won. Because the truth is that the reform was conceived before the Vannacci phenomenon took off, with his ‘Futuro Nazionale’ party reaching over 8 per cent in the polls, mainly at the expense of the League. As a result, the centre-right is currently below the crucial threshold. The latest Ipsos poll by Nando Pagnoncelli speaks for itself: Vannacci’s party stands at 8.8 per cent nationally, the Lega has fallen below 5 per cent (4.7 per cent) and, as a result, the centre-right without Vannacci stands at 39.4 per cent.

But even the leaders of the broad coalition – polling at 44.5 per cent according to Pagnoncelli – cannot rest easy: the combined support for the PD, M5S, AVS and Italia Viva is an arithmetic total, not a political one. It is reasonable to imagine that, come the election, a section of M5S voters would not vote for a coalition led by Schlein, opting instead to abstain or cast a protest vote; conversely, a section of PD voters would shift towards the centre-left under Calenda’s leadership should Conte win the primaries. This creates the paradox of a law that the majority chose to call the ‘Stabilicum’ in the name of a certain outcome – and thus of governability – but which could instead lead to a ‘political quagmire’ if both camps were to remain below 42 per cent. But Meloni is placing great faith in the ‘tactical vote’, in her ability to communicate effectively during the election campaign and, above all, in her opponents’ divisions: in short, with the ‘Stabilicum’ she can contest a race that, under the ‘Rosatellum’, would be lost from the outset.

The most significant change, after the majority bonus, is – not coincidentally – the introduction of the requirement to name the candidate for Prime Minister at the time of submitting the party symbols and the manifesto, on pain of the lists being deemed inadmissible. This provision was strongly championed by Meloni to introduce a sort of ‘mini-premierate’ after the ‘mother of all reforms’ – the Casellati Bill on the direct election of the Prime Minister – was shelved following the victory of the ‘No’ vote in the confirmatory referendum on the justice system. The requirement to name the coalition leader already existed under the old ‘Porcellum’ law, under which elections were held in 2006, in 2008 and in 2013, but there is no doubt that this time it is causing turmoil within the broad coalition and forcing the leaders of the PD and M5S, Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte, into potentially divisive and rift-inducing primaries for the premiership. Which is precisely Meloni’s objective.

As early as the summer, we had a taste of what the atmosphere within the broad coalition will be like, with a combative Conte launching a full-scale takeover bid for the PD: by emphasising his opposition to sending arms to Ukraine under the slogan “stop arms exports to fund schools and healthcare”, he is targeting the pacifist and anti-rearmament electorate across the entire centre-left, including the PD, and by reviving the universal basic income scheme scrapped by the Meloni government, he aims to draw large crowds at polling stations, beyond the M5S’s usual support base, throughout the South.