Municipalities 2024: women mayors are only 16.6%. Those under 40 just 12.6%.

That of mayor seems to be a purely male position, and certainly not one for young people. At least this is the fact that emerges from the results of the last administrative elections in June, which saw 3,700 municipalities, almost half of Italy's 7,900 authorities, vote. And yet, even if only slightly, the situation seems to have improved compared to the identikit of the first citizens in office before the June consultations, so much so that the average age has dropped from 55 to 54.

According to data from the Ministry of the Interior processed by the Centro Studi Enti Locali, aspiring mayors represented 21% of the total of first citizen candidates this year compared to 20% in 2023 and 19% in 2022. In the face of these numbers, it is not surprising that at the ballot box test in the end the mayors elected were only 16.6%, although slightly up from the 15.4% of mayors in office before the last local elections in June. Things went better in the larger cities: in the 29 provincial capitals on the ballot, there were only two mayors, whereas now after the consultations there are eight.

But that of mayor is not a job made for young recruits either: the under-30s elected first citizens in the last round were only 1.9% (better, however, than the 0.5% in office before the June consultations), a percentage that rises to 12.6% if we consider the under 40 (they were 8.2%). The over 60 are 32.8% (against the previous 36.0%), while the over 70 are 7.2% (against the previous 11.1%).

In this election round, the youngest mayor elected was 22-year-old Livio Scaramella, from Samolaco (municipality of 2,800 inhabitants in the province of Sondrio). Scaramella was actually the only candidate for mayor (for the TÜC INSÈMA list) and the only opponent of the student of Political Science and International Relations in Milan, was the quorum of voters, which was amply exceeded with 60.6%.

86-year-old Gianfranco Ludovici is the oldest citizen elected in this local government round. Ludovici was elected mayor of Basaluzzo (about 2,000 inhabitants in the province of Alessandria) at the head of a civic list (Insieme per Basaluzzo), obtaining 756 votes (69.17%). An office he is fond of, since he has led the town since 1995 with the exception of the 2004-2009 interlude.