Municipal elections 2023, the ballots are underway. All challenges
The game of administrative elections in the regions with ordinary statute ends on Monday. And the first round of the challenge opens in the Sicilian municipalities that go to the vote. In the first case, as regards the provincial capitals, the center-right elected four mayors, snatching Latina and confirming the leadership of Sondrio, Treviso, and Imperia, in the first round. While the centre-left won in two capitals, Brescia e Teramowhere he already ruled. Now the eyes are focused on the other seven capitals, which go to the ballot: Ancona, Brindisi, Vicenza, Terni, Massa, Siena and Pisa. Overall, 1.3 million voters in 41 cities will be called to vote. In the Marche capital, the government coalition aims to wrest leadership of the city from the centre-left for the first time.
In Tuscany, the centre-left, on the other hand, is trying to recover the three cities that passed to the opposing coalition in the last electoral round, five years ago. While, in Veneto, the center-right is hunting for a reconfirmation that appears to be rising in Vicenza. Finally, in Terni, the centre-left has remained out of the competition and it is a challenge entirely within the centre-right, between a citizen and a candidate supported by the parties. At the same time as the ballots, the polls also open in 127 Municipalities of Sicily, including Catania, Trapani, Syracuse and Ragusa. The most important challenge in the first round of the Sicilian vote is certainly Catania, where the three leaders of the centre-right, Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani, ended the electoral campaign together.
The bar of the Democratic Party is set at five: there are many cities in which the dem aim to win the ballots. Secretary Elly Schlein mobilized, last week, the entire general staff to carry out that belly-to-the-ground campaign seen in the days leading up to the first round. But the emergency in Emilia-Romagna has forced everyone to pull the handbrake. These are the cities that the dem aim for: Vicenza, Massa, Pisa, Siena and Ancona. The centre-right, after the defeat in Brescia in the first round, has not replicated unitary initiatives in view of the ballots. But he found himself in Sicily, in Catania, to pull the sprint to Enrico Trantino. The FdI candidate will have to contend with Maurizio Caserta, supported by Pd and M5s, and who among the designated councilors has indicated, among others, the former Minister of Labor, Nunzia Catalfo. The government coalition is therefore aiming for victory in the first round in Catania (where the threshold for winning is 40%) and at least two or three victories in the ballots in the provincial capitals. In particular, he counts on being able not to surrender all three disputed Tuscan municipalities to the centre-left.
The center-right still counts on winning easily a Catania, also thanks to the electoral law which allows elections with 40% of the votes. While, as far as the ballots are concerned, he considers it contestable Toasts and at least one of the three Tuscan cities to vote. In Ancona, the centre-right candidate Daniele Silvetti (coming from FI) beat the centre-left and Third Pole candidate Ida Simonella (41.3%) with 45% in the first round. But the second round reopens the game and the center-left coalition has already started the courtship towards the third classified, the civic candidate Francesco Rubini Filogna (6.1%), towards the M5s (the candidate Enrico Sparapani took the 3, 6%) and the Greens (Roberto Rubegni supported, 1.7%). Even in Brindisi, coming from a centre-left administration, the candidate supported by the government coalition was ahead in the first round. The independent Giuseppe Marchionna, also supported by the Third Pole, obtained 44%, while the centre-left candidate, expression of the Five Stars, Roberto Fusco, took 33%. Here too, albeit without formal appearances, the centre-left hopes for the electorate of the excluded: the candidate of Verdi-Si, Riccardo Rossi, who has a dowry of 10.1%. But Rossi is the outgoing mayor, whom the center-left has not re-nominated, choosing Fusco, also by virtue of the agreement between the Pd and the M5s.
Uncertain, for the centre-right, is the game of Vicenza, where the outgoing mayor Francesco Rucco (centre-right independent, coming from An) stopped at 44%, while the centre-left and Third Pole candidate, Giacomo Possamai, obtained 46.2%. A very open challenge in all three Tuscan provincial capitals that ended up in the ballot, considered contestable by both sides.
Eyes are on Pisa, a symbolic city that the centre-left would like to reconquer. Here, the centre-right, with outgoing Northern League mayor Michele Conti, narrowly missed out on winning the first round (49.9%). And Paolo Martinelli (41.1%) of the centre-left, with Pd, M5s and Verdi-Si in coalition, is now aiming for the turnaround by collecting the votes of the electorate of the left-wing candidate, Francesco Auletta (6.7%), even if Auletta he ruled out any formal agreement.
A Siena, the candidate proposed by FdI Nicoletta Fabio brought the centre-right to 30.5%; while Anna Ferretti, of the centre-left, stopped at 28.8%. Ferretti hopes to count on the votes of the other centre-left forces, which went to the M5s candidate Elena Boldrini in the first round, and of the forces of the Third Pole, who ran in uniform, remaining under 2%. Contested by all the votes of the third candidate Fabio Pacciani, who obtained 22.6%, supported by a series of civic lists.
A Massa, another Tuscan capital that the Democratic Party aims to reconquer, in the first round the outgoing mayor of the League, Francesco Persiani (35.4%), was in the lead, also supported by FI, but not by FdI, who presented his candidate, Marco Guidi (20%) placed in third place, therefore out of the ballot. The centre-left candidate Enzo Romolo Ricci (29.9%) will go to the second round. In Massa, the Third Pole split: even without its own symbol, Action supported Persiani, while Italia viva Ricci.
Finally, a separate case is that of Terni, a city governed in the last five years by the centre-right with Northern League mayor Leonardo Latini. FdI has imposed a flag candidate Orlando Masselli, who obtained 35.8% in the first round. In second place was the center-right citizen Stefano Bandecchi (28.1%), patron of Ternana football and founder of the Niccolò Cusano University. Many of the voters who in the first round chose the center-left candidate (21.9%) and the M5s (10.8%) could vote for Bandecchi.
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