European elections: from Berlusconi to Salvini, who were the preference champions

In these European elections Fratelli d'Italia is aiming to be the first party (with bar set by the premier at 26% in order to be able to speak of victory) and Giorgia Meloni (leader in all 5 constituencies) to be the most voted candidate. Already at the 2019 European elections when Fdi was the third force on the centre-right with just 6.5 per cent, she collected 490,000 votes in the five constituencies. In this round, it aims to reach even two million.

But she is not expected to break the all-time records of theEuropean elections, especially as the number of voters expected to go to the polls is expected to drop further (the bet is to stay above the 50% threshold). The leader of Fratelli d'Italia is not expected to surpass the more than 2.3 million votes (2,366,291 to be precise) that Matteo Salvini collected in the European elections five years ago (2019), when the League reached an all-time high (34.3%) and Salvini was the absolute star. Salvini was the top vote-getter in all five constituencies where he stood: also in the South and the Islands. With the record number of preferences in the north-west, where he came close to 700,000.

But the absolute record belongs to Silvio Berlusconi. In 1999, the then leader of Forza Italia, a candidate in all constituencies, came close to 3 million preferences by a handful of votes (2,995,886), 50,000 more than in the 1994 European elections (2,948,111 to be exact) when he had just entered Palazzo Chigi, and more than twice as many as Gianfranco Fini, who came second with 1,279,546.

It should be remembered that the 2014 European elections, in which Matteo Renzi's PD reached a record 40.8% of the vote, were characterised by much smaller numbers. Renzi did not take the field. And in first place was still the then Northern League secretary Matteo Salvini, who, however, obtained 'only' 331,941 votes, adding up the consensus received in his 'fiefdoms': 223,103 in the north-west and 108,838 in the north-east. Behind him the Pd exponent Simona Bonafè, leader in the Centre, with 288,238 preferences. In third place is Raffaele Fitto with 284,547 votes, obtained in only one constituency (South). Out of the podium was the Dem Alessandra Moretti, who, as leader in the North-East, obtained 230,188 preferences.