Zaia, Sangiuliano and Vendola: winners and losers

The elections of 23 and 24 November in Veneto, Campania and Apulia recorded episodes of preference expolitositions for the regional council, such as those of the leghist Luca Zaia, but also excellent exclusions such as that of Nichi Verndola in Apulia. The FdI-Lega derby in Veneto is overwhelmingly won by the leghists. Matteo Salvini's party stands at over 36.3%, effectively doubling the Melonians, at 18.7%. This result is undoubtedly the result of the candidature of the outgoing governor Luca Zaia, the League's leader in all provinces after the failure to give the green light to the constitution of his own list. Zaia, when the polls were completed, exceeded 200,000 preferences (203,054). A result on the heels of the one obtained a year ago by the premier Giorgia Meloni (232,015), recording the national record of preferences taken in regional elections in Italy.

The preferences to Zaia alone make up 10.8% of the valid votes cast in this electoral round. The record figure was recorded in the province of Treviso (the city of which Manildo had been mayor), where the preferences for Zaia amounted to 13.5% of the valid votes.Previously the record of preferences in a regional election was held by Alfredo Vito, who exactly 40 years ago was elected regional councillor for the DC in the province of Naples with 121,000 preferences.

Although Zaia was instrumental in allowing the League to double FdI, even taking away the outgoing governor's preferences, the League obtained over 90,000 more votes than the centre-right's second party. Zaia won in six out of seven constituencies, filling up with preferences in the Marca Trevigiana where he was president of the Province: 48,253 votes. He only gave way to FdI in the Belluno area, defeated by MP Dario Bond, among others in the only province where FdI did better than the League. Forza Italia's regional coordinator Flavio Tosi made it (10,581 preferences). Among the excellent names left out of the Council, at least for the moment, is Vanessa Camani, who had been the Pd group leader in the last councillorship: in Padua, for the opposition, the deputy mayor of the capital Andrea Micalizzi was the star. (18,051 votes). Of the four Leghist candidates close to Roberto Vannacci, only Stefano Valdegamberi, (8,268 preferences) in the Verona constituency, is in for now.

now everyone has understood what I meant when I said I will see that I am a problem. Go and look at the data and you have understood,' Zaia said, commenting on the first figures of his personal success at the Veneto regional elections. "The signal of approval I received is a signal of gratitude compared to everything I suffered before these elections with the no to the Zaia List, the no to my name on the symbol. If we had had the Zaia List today this majority would have had even more councillors. You govern with councillors not with talk. And here we are accomplishing an impossible mission if we think of the last European results,' Zaia concluded.

Among the big names in the field is former minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, Fdi's leader in Campania. In the Fratelli d'Italia list that obtains three seats in Naples, he ranks second with 9,902 votes. First is Ira Fele, a newcomer to the council, wife of the party's provincial coordinator, MP Michele Schiano, with 14,788 preferences. Third elected is Raffaele Pisacane with 9,731 votes. Marco Nonno, former Naples city councillor, is narrowly left out with 9,605 votes. Flop instead for Maria Rosaria Boccia, protagonist of last summer's affair that involved her with Sangiuliano. She is only 16th out of 27 in the list of the mayor of Terni, Domenico Bandecchi with just 89 votes. And it didn't go better for Daniela Di Maggio, the mother of Giovanbattista Cutolo, the boy killed for trivial reasons in the centre of Naples two summers ago: nominated as a candidate for the League in Naples, she obtained 964 votes.