How Meloni’s preferential voting system works. The risk of there being no winner remains

‘Preferential votes in parliamentary elections had been absent since 1993 – that is, for almost 35 years. They are returning today because the centre-right has chosen to reintroduce them, following a proposal by Fratelli d’Italia.’ And again: “To the left, which today claims that this is not enough, I must point out that those who have never wanted them over the past 35 years – and who voted to reject them as recently as a month ago – lack credibility on this issue. So the difference is not between those who want more preferential votes and those who want fewer. It is between those who have reintroduced them into the law and those who have not.”

In the end, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni decided to take the heat and tried to steer the majority’s narrative towards ‘her’ electoral reform. Although the centre-right’s proposals – rejected in July by the Chamber of Deputies following a secret ballot and approved yesterday by the Senate with 91 votes in favour, 67 against and 2 abstentions – are based on fixed list leaders, and are therefore valid only from the second candidate on the list downwards (voters will be able to cast three preferences by ticking the boxes next to the names, and gender alternation will apply only from the second candidate on the list onwards). A solution that ultimately satisfies the League and Forza Italia, which have always been opposed to preferential voting: small and medium-sized parties, in fact, will almost exclusively elect the ‘fixed’ list leaders chosen by their leaders (according to a YouTrend simulation for a list polling at around 10 per cent of the vote, the proportion of candidates elected via preferences is marginal, at around 5 per cent). In the end, it will mainly be candidates from the major parties – namely Fratelli d’Italia and the PD – who will be vying for preferential votes. Overall, the proportion of elected representatives from parties relying on preferential votes, taking into account the possibility of candidates standing in multiple constituencies, is expected to stand at around one-third.

In any case, Meloni has achieved a clear political victory: she has managed to rally the majority behind a crucial amendment. As for the rest, things are going as they must: the trap devised by the PD – involving the tabling of a sub-amendment to introduce free preferences for all, after having put the senators from Fratelli d’Italia, who have always been in favour, in a difficult position for hours – does not spring because it cannot spring. To do so would risk derailing the entire electoral reform and trigger a government crisis.

The government is therefore deferring the matter to the Chamber to avoid a resounding ‘no’ to ‘genuine’ preferences, whilst the burden of taking responsibility for honouring the majority agreement on preferences with fixed-list candidates is left to the parties – that is, to the Prime Minister’s party: ‘The centre-right senators will vote unanimously in favour of Amendment 1.6, first tabled by Lisei (Fdi) on preferences with fixed-position list leaders, and will reject Amendment 1.6/1 tabled by the opposition, which abolishes fixed-position list leaders and introduces two preference votes’. Hence the predictable accusations from the opposition (“Meloni is losing face and saying no to real preferential votes – that is, for everyone – by falling back on fake preferential votes,” says Senator Dario Parrini of the Democratic Party, speaking on behalf of the opposition), with the Prime Minister’s subsequent response.

But if the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion from the outset, why did Fratelli d’Italia spend hours hinting at its intention to vote in favour of the PD’s sub-amendment, thereby provoking a backlash from Forza Italia and the League? In the corridors of Palazzo Madama, it is the ‘Azzurri’ and the League themselves who offer a possible explanation: in exchange for this apparent U-turn, the ‘brothers’ secured Forza Italia’s green light to scrap the so-called ‘anti-poaching’ clause. In effect, this is a green light for the so-called ‘decoy lists’ being considered within Meloni’s camp, both as a measure against Vannacci (such as ‘Futuro Italiano’ or ‘Futuro della Nazione’) and as a means of scooping up votes across the board: all lists, even those below the 3 per cent threshold, will contribute votes that will bolster the coalition’s total for the purposes of the bonus.