Those who expected the administrative elections to draw a detailed portrait of the political situation in Italy, in a moment of great difficulty for the parties, will have the your definitive answers on Monday 21 May, after 18 pm, when the ballot boxes will close in 120 Italian municipalities.
Today the deadlines for the appearance expired, the electoral mechanism that allows mayoral candidates to declare their connection with additional lists other than those in the first round. And while the UDC juggles between supporting civic lists and the centre-left (and in one case, in Isernia, the centre-right), the 5 Star Movement and the League have completely refused to belong, preferring to focus more on the construction of an evident identity based on one's own diversity.
But, beyond the lack of apparent connections, it will be interesting to understand what the base of these two movements will choose to do, in some very large cities, i.e. to understand whether the Grillini on one side and the Lega supporters on the other abstain or if, instead, they will prefer to express a own preference, contravening, so to speak, the choices of the top management.
The elections will most likely be decided by the choices of all those who in the first round voted for a candidate who was excluded from the ballot. The votes of the PDL, for example, will have to find a destination in both Genoa and Palermo, where Silvio Berlusconi's party remained out of the ballot.
In Genoa, the most natural choice appears to be support for Enrico Musso, who must attempt a desperate run-up to Marco Doria, while uncertainty remains as to where 13% of the grillino Putti will end up, while in Palermo the challenge is entirely within the left, between the candidate of Italia dei Valori, and great favorite, Leoluca Orlando, who also obtained the support of the UDC, and Fabrizio Ferrandelli, who emerged victorious from the primaries of the Democratic Party, but, as too often happens, unwelcome among the voters .
In L'Aquila, on the other hand, large sections of the local PDL have declared their support for centrist Giorgio De Matteis, as opposed to the centre-left candidate, outgoing mayor Massimo Cialente. And who knows what the Pidiellino electorate will choose in Parma, where, to challenge Bernazzoli of the Democratic Party, Federico Pizzarotti, of the 5 Star Movement, presents himself in the ballot.
The turnout data will also be very important, to understand what remains of the ability to attract consensus Pd and Pdl, which collide directly in 57 municipalities.
And it is on the challenge between the two Poles that the main game is played. Even if in the first round, as far as the capitals are concerned, the match ended in substantial equality, the PDL shows up for the appointment with the ballots in trouble and short of breath, abandoned by the wide desertion of its voters and faced with the concrete risk that defeat could turn into defeat as it goes along.
The Pdl, in fact, appears on the ballot only in 8 of the 19 capitals still to be assigned (and has concrete hopes of victory only in three of them), while the Democratic Party reached the second round in 17 municipalities and was ahead in the first round in 13. As for the other municipalities, out of 101 ballots, the center-left is ahead in 82, and can nurture the well-founded hope of wresting some of its strongholds in the North from the right, creeping into the rifts between the Lega and Pdl.
There is nothing left now but to wait for the outcome of the vote. Only then will we have organic answers on the relations between the parties and on their ability, faced with a direct challenge, not only to mobilize their base, but also and above all to add up the electorates. The future of Italian politics passes through here.
