Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini at an electoral meeting of the centre-right coalition at the Adriano's Temple in Rome, Italy, on 1st March 2018. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.Italians go to the polls on March 4, and no one knows what will happen next. Observers and commentators agree that the election outcome is far from clear and that the latest polls are inconclusive. Voters are polarised over divisive issues such as taxes, the EU and immigration, and the electorate is roughly divided into three factions, each with about a third of the vote.
The outgoing center-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD), led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, has seen his support decline in the last year to about 23%. To the left of the democrats, the Free and Equal Party (Liberi e Uguali, LeU) – recently founded by PD defectors – is more a competitor than an ally. The center-right bloc is leading the polls at 35%: nonetheless, the coalition itself is divided roughly in half between center-right Forza Italia (FI), led by former prime minister and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, and the far-right anti-immigrant League (Lega) championed by the outspoken eurosceptic leader Matteo Salvini.
The anti-establishment 5Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) looks set to become Italy’s biggest single party (although behind the center-right coalition), but its leader Luigi Di Maio has generally stated that they don’t want to join other forces in an attempt to form a government.
