Matteo Salvini rally in Pontida
The new Matteo Salvini
Edited by Alessandro Amadori, pollster and political scientist
Since taking office in the Ministry of Infrastructure, the leader of the League, Matthew Salvinihas assumed a different communicative “posture”, which we can summarize with three comparative adjectives: more pragmatic, more concrete, more moderate. This new course seems to correlate not only with a stabilization of the League’s demographic parameters, but also with at least a partial trend reversal. Voting intentions for the party stand today in a wider fluctuation band than just before the political vote at the end of September, with a value above the range reaching the second digit (ie ten percent share). And even trust in Matteo Salvini shows some encouraging signs of toning. What brought about this change in strategy? There are two factors at play.
The first is the personal maturation of Matteo Salvini himself, who is now a 49-year-old man. Still a decidedly young age for Italian politics, but at the same time very different from the 39 years of 2013 when, at the end of the year, he was elected federal secretary of the Northern League. In the transition from 40 to 50, Matteo Salvini, like most of us, also acquired greater reflexivityan attitude more oriented towards weighting, evaluating, looking for an effective solution”possible”. The still adolescent spirit of the first decade of this century has given way to a more moderate political adulthood.
The second is the awareness, in Matteo Salvini himself but also in the staff of his closest collaborators, that different political phases require strategies, both of political construction and of communication, which are in turn different. Italy in 2018, pre-pandemic, had a structure of needs, and a corresponding sentiment, which well it was combined with Salvini’s somewhat impetuous decision-making back then, with his deliberately clear-cut, often even provocative, communication style.
Today’s Italy, after a pandemic and still in the midst of a war in Europe and its economic and social consequences, has a dominant need for reassurance and protection, and a feeling that is not inclined, and not very receptive, towards narratives “fight”. More sensitive to a constructive approach and less centered on individual protagonism. Thus, on the one hand Salvini himself, and on the other his group of closest advisers, have gradually matured the awareness of having to change register: less “epic of the Captain”, more “daily work of the problem solver”. So far, the new strategy appears to have produced positive results. The forthcoming test bench of the regional elections in Lazio and Lombardy will be able to confirm, or not, this hypothesis.
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