The regional elections of November 23 and 24 went according to expectations: in Veneto a right-wing coalition with Northern League member Alberto Stefani won, in Campania and Puglia a center-left coalition won, which nominated respectively Roberto Fico from the 5 Star Movement and Antonio Decaro from the PD. Despite the predictable outcome, there are some interesting policy questions to look at.
The results in Veneto quite accurately reproduced what had been predicted in the polls: the latest data showed a right-wing coalition with Stefani gaining 64 percent and a center-left coalition, which nominated Giovanni Manildo, gaining around 30 percent. The other candidates (Fabio Bui, Marco Rizzo, and Riccardo Szumski) should receive approximately 6 percent of the vote.
In Puglia, Decaro got about 64 percent of the center-left vote, while the center-right, which nominated civic leader Luigi Lobuono, got 30 points less. Two other candidates, Sabino Mangano and Ada Donno, received very little and did not exceed the threshold for electing council members.
In Campania, Roberto Fico’s main opponent was Edmondo Cirielli, deputy foreign minister of the Fratelli d’Italia. This is the area where the polls gave the favorite candidate the slightest advantage, but in the end the center-left coalition took more than expected and the right-wing coalition took much less. The latest data shows that the center-left group is 58 percent and the right group is 38 percent. The other four minor candidates (Nicola Campanile, Stefano Bandecchi, Giuliano Granato and Carlo Arnese) got around 5 percent: also in this case it is highly likely that none of their list will exceed the threshold for having members on the board.
There are some outcomes that are more important than others. In Veneto the leading party was the League which achieved around 36 percent, a quite significant advantage compared to the Fratelli d’Italia which stopped at approximately 17 percent. This is not obvious: the League is the party that historically has the most consensus in Veneto, but recently the Fratelli d’Italia has always performed better. At the 2024 European Championship, for example, he managed to win the League title almost three times over. The good results of these elections are of course related to the presidential candidacy of Luca Zaia as leader of the League in all constituencies, who has a lot of support in the region (and is already considering running again).
But in Campania, Testa Alta’s A-list, courting outgoing president Vincenzo De Luca, received more votes than Fico’s. This was a remarkable result for De Luca who, after unsuccessfully running for the third time in a row, supported Fico with little enthusiasm, and only after the PD had promised him in return for the appointment of his son as party secretary in Campania.
Finally, no one expected such a high result for Resistere Veneto’s list of candidates, Riccardo Szumski, who received more than 5 percent and will therefore enter the board. Szumski, a 73-year-old former member of the Northern League, was expelled from the Medical Association because during the pandemic he opposed mandatory vaccinations and green passes.
