Two weeks after its surprise regional victory in Sardinia, the opposition to Giorgia Meloni missed the double on Sunday March 10 in Abruzzo, where it hoped to confirm its momentum before the European elections in June.
The right-wing candidate, the outgoing president, Marco Marsilio, won 53.5% of the votes against 46.5% for his opponent Luciano D'Amico, supported by the Democratic Party (PD, left), the leading opposition party, the 5 Star Movement (M5S) as well as two small centrist parties. “Marco Marsilio is the first president in the history of Abruzzo to be re-elected by voters. We are very proud that the citizens of Abruzzo wanted to continue to trust him,” the head of government, Giorgia Meloni, wrote on Monday on X.
Mr. Marsilio is a member of Fratelli d’Italia (FDI, far right), Ms. Meloni’s party. Elected five years ago at the head of this region in central Italy, he then became the first president of an Italian region from this party.
Opposition parties divided
All the heavyweights of the government have succeeded one another over the last two weeks in Abruzzo, announcing major investments in the process, to avoid a failure like in Sardinia, where the right lost the presidency of the region by a handful of votes, less than 2,000.
FDI received 24.05% of the vote, followed by PD at 20.39% – twice as many as in 2019 – and Forza Italia (FI, right), at 13.26%. All the other parties are collapsing, including the League, the anti-migrant party of Matteo Salvini, which obtained 7.62% of the votes against 27.5% in the previous regional elections (and 8.1% in 2022, during the legislative elections).
Very divided, the Italian opposition parties have struggled to assert themselves against Ms. Meloni since she came to power in October 2022, and national polls give her party a lead of 7 to 8 points over the other parties. The next regional elections, on April 21 and 22 in Basilicata, promise to be just as complicated for the opposition, which still does not have a single candidate against the right-wing coalition which is presenting the outgoing president.
