2018 Italian general election
The 2018 Italian general election was held on 4 March 2018 after the Italian Parliament was dissolved by President Sergio Mattarella on 28 December 2017.[1] Voters were electing the 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and the 315 elective members of the Senate of the Republic for the 18th legislature of the Italian Republic since 1948. The election took place concurrently with the Lombard and Lazio regional elections.[2] No party or coalition gained an absolute majority in the parliament, even though the centre-right coalition won a plurality of seats as a coalition, and the Five Star Movement (M5S) won a plurality of seats as an individual party.[3]
The centre-right coalition, whose main party was the right-wing League led by Matteo Salvini, emerged with a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, while the anti-establishment M5S led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes. The centre-left coalition, led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the governing Democratic Party (PD), came third;[4][5] however, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.[3]
The 2018 Italian government formation lasted three months and the first Conte government was formed on 1 June between the M5S and the League, whose leaders both became deputy prime ministers in a populist coalition government led by the M5S-linked independent Giuseppe Conte as Prime Minister of Italy.[6] The 2019 Italian government crisis started when the League withdrew its support of the government and the coalition ended with Conte's resignation on 20 August.[7] A new M5S-led coalition was formed with the centre-left PD and the Free and Equal left-wing parliamentary group, with Conte at its head, on 5 September 2019.[8][9] Amid the 2021 Italian government crisis, the second Conte government was replaced by a national unity government headed by Mario Draghi.[10]
As a consequence of the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum and of two different sentences of the Constitutional Court of Italy, the electoral laws for the two houses of the Italian Parliament lacked uniformity. In October 2017, the PD, AP, FI, the League, and minor parties agreed on a new electoral law,[143] which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies with 375 votes in favour and 215 against[144] and by the Senate with 214 votes against 61; the reform was opposed by the M5S, the MDP, SI, FdI and minor parties.[145]
The so-called Rosatellum bis,[146] named after Ettore Rosato (PD leader in the Chamber of Deputies), is a mixed electoral system, with 37% of seats allocated using a first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting and 63% using the proportional largest remainder method, with one round of voting.[147][148] The 630 deputies were to be elected as follows:[149]
The 315 elective senators were to be elected as follows:[149]
A small, variable number of senators for life were to be members of the Senate.
For Italian residents, each house members were to be elected in single ballots, including the constituency candidate and his/her supporting party lists. In each single-member constituency, the deputy or senator is elected on a plurality basis, while the seats in multi-member constituencies are allocated nationally. In order to be calculated in single-member constituency results, parties need to obtain at least 1% of the national vote. In order to receive seats in multi-member constituencies, parties need to obtain at least 3% of the national vote. Elects from multi-member constituencies would come from closed lists.[150]
The voting paper, which is a single one for the first-past-the-post and the proportional systems, shows the names of the candidates to single-member constituencies and in close conjunction with them the symbols of the linked lists for the proportional part, each one with a list of the relative candidates.[151] The voter was able to cast their vote in three different ways:[152]