The results of the latest polls before the elections in Italy show that the undisputed leader of the election race is the party "Brothers of Italy" (FDI), led by Giorgia Meloni.
interesting Moscow is losing its Trojan Horse in Italy
Convincing indicators of FDI as of September 9:
The indicators become not only convincing, but frankly impressive, if you look at the history of the growth of support for FDI by Italian voters:
How did Ms. Meloni succeed in increasing the number of FDI sympathizers fivefold in four years? How did she go on her journey from the Cinderella of Italian politics to the main candidate for Prime Minister - Ministers of Italy?
An interesting and perhaps very useful experience, similar to a well-known fairy tale in a modern version - one that is told by modern storytellerі, like analysts and journalists.
Let's start at least with 2018
At that time, the "Brothers of Italy" suffered from competition with Matteo Salvini's LEGA, which presented ideas and values similar to FDI with more force and radicality. Several important points helped FDI to remain at the level of 4-5% of the total number of voters:
1. Giorgia Meloni's personal authority and charisma - if her young party received 4.3% of the vote in March 2018, then Meloni personally received a rating of 35% voter confidence, according to Demos&Pi research. This is one of the highest ratings of 2018 - Renzi had 24%, Grasso 25% and Berlusconi - 29%.
2. Search for differences and advantages over LEGA, expanding the geography of electoral support, capturing a certain part of the narratives of the "5 Star Movement''.
3. Successful positioning of the party. Here, FDI did not agree to the tempting offer to enter into a coalition with the Conte government. Choosing whether to become a junior partner of the two leaders of the Italian parties at the time, to have a secondary role with responsibility for the actions of the "big brothers" or to choose the prospect of an opposition role, Meloni chose the second option.
In 2019, FDI support increased from 4% at the beginning of the year to 10.6% as of December 19.
How did she achieve this? What were the components of success? The first success of 2019 for Giorgia Meloni's party was the victory in the regional elections in Abruzzo - on February 10, Fratelli d'Italia managed to elect its candidate, Marco Marsilio, as the president of the region in a coalition with Lega and Forza Italia. The FdI list obtained 6.5% in Abruzzo, which was more than double, in percentage terms, in comparison to 3.0% obtained in the previous 5-year regional elections.
Next regional elections, in Sardinia (February 24) and Basilicata (March 24), confirm the upward trend of Fratelli d'Italia, which, having received respectively 4.7% and 5.9%, also achieved growth here compared to political elections last year. The thesis of 2018 about expanding the geography of electoral support started to become a reality.
Undoubtedly, the most important election event of 2019 for the "Brothers of Italy" was the European vote on May 26. Under the slogan "Change everything in Europe" in April, Giorgia Meloni started a campaign for the elections to the European Parliament. In the elections to the European Parliament, the FdI received 6.4%, up from 3.7% in the previous European session, in which it did not elect MEPs. In total, with Giorgia Meloni as the leader, the FdI obtained 6 MEPs seats. This was a significant success, which was reinforced by the following successes in the regional elections - in Piedmont the FdI list reached 5.5%.
First victory over Forza Italia (FI) - three months after the European Union elections, the distance between the FdI and the FI is getting smaller: due to the internal disagreements in Forza Italia and the failure of the LEGA in the realm of executive power, Giorgia Meloni’s party is starting to attract more and more sympathizers among the disillusioned electorates of the other two center-right parties. September 5, 2019 becomes a historic moment - the support of Fratelli d' Italia in the general election reaches 7.4%, against 6.6% for Forza Italia. Overall national success was anchored by regional victories – on October 27 in Umbria, the “Brothers of Italy” received 10.4%, which is almost double the percentage compared to Berlusconi's party, which stops at 5.5 %.
There were also unpleasant moments in the victorious course of the FdI - on December 20, 2019, Roberto Rosso, a well-known figure of the party in Turin, where he was a municipal councilor, was arrested. Rosso was arrested on charges of buying votes from the Calabrian Ndrangheta mafia. Giorgia Meloni takes decisive action - distances and excludes Rosso from FdI; the latter first leaves the post of regional councilor, and then the post of councilor in the municipality and region.
Fratelli d'Italia is working further to increase the number of regional councils chaired by their representatives.
2020 – new successes vs challenges of COVID-19
Giorgia Meloni 's party becomes the third political force in the country and prepares to fight for the leadership of the center-right with Salvini's LEGA. How exactly - firstly, FdI managed to win the posts of two regional presidents - Francesco Acquaroli in Marche and Marco Marsilio in Abruzzo, and secondly - to increase nationwide voter support from 10.7% at the beginning of the year to 16% at the end of the year. Part of this growth was due to a decrease in LEGA's support for Matteo Salvini.
Another important achievement for the Fratelli d'Italia was the victory over the 5-Star Movement, the second major victory, which, together with the historic victory over Forza Italia in 2019, saw the "Brothers of Italy" in just over a year move from the fourth rung of the Italian political power to the third.
The victory over the 5-Star Movement came just a few days after the election of Giorgia Meloni as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a European conservative and Eurosceptic right-wing party that has 62 MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg, of which 6 were elected in 2019 from the FdI.
In 2020, the strengthening of the FdI in the regions gained further development - the first 2 regions that voted for the "Brothers of Italy" were Emilia-Romagna and Calabria: here the Fratelli d'Italia scored 8.6% and 10.9%, respectively. Next, victories in the south and in Tuscany, where the "Brothers of Italy" gained the second highest percentage in regional elections: 13.5%.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine - difficult conditions or new opportunities for growth?
In the global fight against COVID-19, the "Brothers of Italy" acted contradictory - at the beginning of the pandemic Giorgia Meloni emphasized the readiness of the FdI to cooperate with the government in emergency situations. However, soon the restrictive measures adopted by the government drew sharp criticism from the "Brothers of Italy" and the center-right.
Thus, in the fall, the "Brothers of Italy" accused the government of not doing enough to prevent further pandemic development, and to provide economic support to the population categories that have been irreversibly affected by the lock-down measures. Voters liked the criticism - in mid-November, Giorgia Meloni 's popularity increased again, even exceeding, according to the EMG Acqua survey, the popularity of Giuseppe Conte:
Meloni proved that she can assure growth even in emergency situations, and the war started by Russia against Ukraine was another test, or rather a springboard for her. We remember that the current war de facto has been going on since 2014, so we are talking about a new phase of the war, initiated by Moscow's suicidal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The third fundamental victory of Giorgia Meloni and FdI
Before the start of the full-scale invasion of fascists from Russia into sovereign Ukraine, Meloni's positions in aggregate coincided with the general position of the Italian right, in particular with the statements of Matteo Salvini. She considered sanctions against the Kremlin due to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to be "killing" Italian business. Salvini, who once praised Vladimir Putin, even signing a cooperation agreement with the Russian president's “United Russia” party in 2017, said the sanctions were not working and were instead "bringing Europe to its knees and Italy to its knees."
It seems that Salvini's focus on supporting Russia even when it clearly became a terrorist country, his personal connections with Putin, the connections of his aides with hidden sources of illegal financing of biased politicians lead to a further drop in LEGA's rating, and to perception of Salvini's party as externally controlled, run by Putin's bloody regime in Moscow.
Meloni pragmatically used society's demand for resistance to absolute evil, which is represented by modern dictatorial Russia. She has consistently declared that sanctions are working, citing a significant slowdown in Russia's GDP growth; since the start of the war she has staunchly supported sending weapons to Ukraine, assuring the international community that she is a conservative pro-European and pro-Atlantic politician.
It is quite logical that right after Meloni’s statements regarding Russia's aggression, of EU sanctions and joint actions support, the third fundamental victory of Giorgia Meloni personally and the "Brothers of Italy" took place. On August 5, 2020, FDI overtook LEGA in the national rankings. The gap between the "love-&-hate friends" is 11.5% - for 24.4% in FDI and 12.9% in LEGA respectively, as of September 9, 2022.
Demanding future for Italy and Giorgia Meloni
We witnessed the rapid growth of the opposition party Fratelli d'Italia and its leader Giorgia Meloni, who successfully overcame Matteo Salvini's LEGA and became the main party of the center-right coalition. Most likely, Ms. Meloni will hold the chair of Prime Minister of Italy.
This story of phenomenal success and transformation of a young "politician soldier" into the most powerful person of a major European state can be compared with the classic fairy tale about Cinderella, who later became the Queen.
Pragmatism, intuition, charisma, the ability to build and implement long-term strategies - this is what Meloni's crystal slipper is made of.
Ms. Meloni has already called Moscow's invasion "an unacceptable, large-scale act of war by Putin's Russia against Ukraine"; she actively supported sending weapons to the Ukrainian government. Recent visits of Italian leading politician and Meloni's FdI colleague, Senator Adolfo Urso, to Kyiv and Washington in September of this year confirm the commitment of the leader of the "Brothers of Italy" to the common intentions of Europe and North America to protect freedom and democracy in Ukraine and the whole world.
Meloni’s success depends on the victory of Europe and the collective West in the fight against the authoritarian threat from the East. Meloni has already proven that she can plan and win long-term campaigns in a rapidly changing environment. So we can hope that in difficult times of world trials, the Italian government will be headed by a strong leader devoted to consistent protection and development of interests of a free and successful Italy and Europe, free of dependency from business ties with Russians.