(by as-well and Mak)

Welcome to yet another version of this thread where you have to ask yourself: What????

(Yes, there will be a lot of "what???". It's best to sit down in a comfortable chair, prepare some salumi, start this with a classic Bicicletta aperitivo drink or a Moretti beer to enjoy this shitshow.)

OK but in order. First, why are there elections?

Simply put: Italy has a history of unstable governments. Often, they resolve this by uniting behind a caretaker government until the next election - this time the Draghi government. That went relatively well; it included everyone but the far-right - until the moment it didn't, and it imploded.

Why? Depends whom you ask. Formally speaking, it's because the Movimento Cinque Stelle rescinded its support because they were not happy with a new economic stimulus and welfare stuff - they thought it was not generous enough and so abstained. Some say that was due to internal issues of the party; others that it was a last effort to rise in the polls. Be that as it may, there's an election before the term was up.
(Side note: The government before this one fell because former PM Renzi was a dick had an issue with an economic stimulus law. And the one before that was the Salvini-Conte-Maio one, which just crashed like a badly fermented Fociacca. That all happened in the last 4 years.)

How do they vote?

You know what? Fair question. Italy has a lot of tried and failed electoral reforms. This time around, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate get elected at the same time. Any stable government needs the majority of both chambers. This time around, both chambers will be smaller than ever before.

Both houses are elected in a parallel voting system. about 37% of each house by first-past-the-post in single member districts, and about 61% by proportional representation. The Chamber uses nation-wide representation, and the Senate regional. A few deputies and senators are picked in overseas constituencies. Lists are closed, and split-ticked voting is not possible.

The electoral threshold is 3% (and perhaps less for parties in coalitions. I'm too far into my Aperitivo to understand.)

So who wants to rule Italy?

So let's go through ; you may need a bit of a more robust wine at this point. Chianti perhaps? Keep in mind, too, that Italy is in a perpetual economic and political crisis.

Minor parties

There's the People's Union / Unione Popolare, the once proud far-left struggles to beat the electoral hurdle. The Italexit party might beat it; left-wing populist wackjobs Sovereign and Popular Italy doesn't even appear in the polls on my aggregators.

Center-left Block

The block is led by the Democratic Party / Partito Democratico. A party formed from a bunch of different ones, it's a big tent party that averages out to center-left. In practice, this usually means some kind of boring neoliberal reformsim and some welfareism. A boring choice, if you think Italy needs a foundational shift in politics and economy. (its most economically right wing factions, represented by Renzi and Calenda, have split off recently. A former splitter, an orthodox social-democratic faction, Articolo Uno, who left due to renzi’s shitfuckery, is currently in the process of merging back into the party. The PD still has politicians that were members of the PCI (eurocommunist) AND the DC (Christian democrat CIA puppets who Kissinger organized the murder of one of the leaders of. It’s a LONG story Mak MIGHT tell you on the discord.). Enrico Letta himself is generally considered to be on the right of the party, with him and his faction generally sitting around social liberalism. (For completeness' sake, the favorite (Article One, Italian Socialist Party) as well as least favorite groupings (VOLT) are running on the PD list, but none of them really matter).

Former M5S leader Luigi di Maio presents his Civic Commitment party, which seems... kinda just centrist? As always with party splits, this seems more a result of internal quarrels than a real programmatic issue. Alas, Di Maio seems popular enough to gain some seats.

The Greens and Left Alliance, composed unoriginally of the Green party and the Left party as well as some regionalists, has been a steady partner of the Partito Democratico, if to its left.

Fairly new party More Europe / Più Europa are pretty standard liberals; the last remnants of the once strong radical party.... however, these pro-Europeans have had more splits recently than Italy had prime ministers.

Kinda between the blocks

So uh.... here's the point where I dearly hope you are into wine because now it gets complicated. Open a bottle of Chianti at your convenience.

First of all, it should be noted that Italy tends to have a fifth or fourth of its voters being unspecifically dissatisfied with politics. In 2018, these votes went to the Cinque Stelle. These voters appear to have moved on to Fratelli d'Italia.... which complicates stuff.

The big between-the-lines is the Five Star Movement / Movimento Cinque Stelle. They would best be described as populists. Founded by a comedian and governed for a long time by a mixture of his will and very-online constant basic democracy, they are a true crapshot. Starting out as kinda the uproar of the economically disadvantaged south, being both environmentalist and euroskeptic, the party has participated in the last three governmetns and is now led, it appears, by former Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte who appears to be turning it into a populist, but non-socialist left-of-center party. Or something like that. It seems like they were quite happy to govern with the PD tho. But who knows. A wild card! Why a wild-card? M5S had some tankies, some libertarians, some internet utopians and some angry youth. The tankies formed the Partito Comunista (not to be confused with the PCI, which is cool but dead). The right-wing members and voters left. The anti-vaxxers left. The centrists have left. So Conte and his left-wing populists have the reigns of a party that now polls at about a third of what it once was.

Not a wild card but pretty dumb is former PD leader and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva. A supposedly liberal party, it fits his turn at governing Italy, which was marred by neoliberal reforms and little in terms of other advances. (If you think I'm too harsh, his party polls at 5%, so he is universally disliked enough to be a minor player). This party is also only going to clear the threshold because.... ah man whom am I kidding, it's a circus. Some libs formerly allied to Più Europa split and now go with Renzi. I totally could explain this. But you aren't interested in liberal-radical drama in Italy, and my Chianti is hindering my typing.

The Right Wing coalition

Ah, you waited for this, right? Being a lot of alcohol deep, now's the time for an aptly-titled Primitivo, a nice red wine that will go down much better than what you're about to read.

This block is composed of some absolute clowns and dangerous fash. It is composed of the right-wing populists of the Lega around Matteo Salvini; the conservative liberal-conservative (comparatively) pro-business kleptocrat peeps creeps of Forza Italia around Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi; the post-fascist Brothers of Italy / Fratelli d'Italia around Giorgia Meloni (plus the Noi Moderati minor party).

This creepy clown show has worked together on and off for a while. Lega was ofc in government with M5S in 2019, was very popular on anti-immigrant, anti-EU sentiment.... but lost all its mojo since, polling at around 15%. These protest voters went to Fratell d'Italia instead. Meloni's party stands in the long tradition of post-fascism in Italy; rarely was it as powerful and threatening though. She advocates returning to a presidential system (where she could be the strongwoman); peddles in conspiracy theories, homophobia and xenophobia; likes to keep a very small distance from neonazi groups. All in all, they are terrible and we can only hope that the post-fascism moniker remains fitting. Ugh. I need more primitivo.

They all have complicated relations with the rest of the West, NATO and Russia. Lega and FdI may have been funded by Russia, although they deny it. Meloni emphasizes her support for NATO and sanctions against Russia, but Salvini is not so clear and would like to lift sanctions.

Oh, and if someone comes in and claims FdI is not fascist... go ahead and compare their logo with the old MSI, the Mussolini supporter party of the 80ies named after the late Nazi puppet state. Any Fiamma looking similar?

Who will win?

No easy way to put it - the polls project a comfortable right-wing majority. At the time of writing this, they are projected to gain about 250 of 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputites, and a majority of the same size in the senate. The strongest party with a fourth of the vote is projected to be Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia; followed by the Partito Democratico with 21%.
The big losers will likely be the Lega Nord - at one time projected to 40%, now polling at 12 - and the Cinque Stelle, who had 30% at the last election but now poll at 13%.

Given that the right-wing hates each other it isn't clear yet whether that will result in Giorgia Meloni as prime minister. The Italian right wing block has serious internal quarrels and, well, does strongly dislike and distrust each other. One also has to wonder whether Berlusconi, the old fox, will be content with letting Meloni rule, or whether he'll pull out some Ace that results in as much power as possible for him.

OK; this is copium. Unfortunately, all things point to a right-wing coalition with neofascist Meloni at the helm. Sad.

So.... drink an espresso, and stay tuned for the next years of Italian drama! With these numbers, a stable government is unlikely.

P.S.: Some fun facts:

• Trump simps for Cinque Stelle wrong link I meant this one
• Hillary Clinton said it would be cool if Meloni, a woman, became PM, causing a minor twitter shitstorm
• The media talks of a rift between Salvini and Meloni, and they posted a creepy selfie
• Salvini's Lega once had an agreement of Cooperation with a certain Russian ruling party. Definitely no need for concern there
• This is the first ever September election, traditionally a Taboo month for elections cause every single politician spends all of August at a beach. Conte the populist robbed them of their beech holidays. Good job, I say!

Should our intro be not funny you may wish to head over to the BBC but I'll take it personally: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62726468