The polling stations close at 23:00 tonight. After a hectic election campaign, voters in Italy will decide on what the left has tried to present as a dramatic, existential election. Is Italy really going to get a prime minister with roots in neo-fascism, the successors of the dictator Benito Mussolini? For some voters, it is an unbearable thought. “Born under Mussolini. I don’t want to die under Meloni. God help us,” an elderly man had written on a poster he had taken to the Piazza del Popolo, where the centre-left Partito Democratico held a closing rally in Rome on Friday afternoon. Party leader Enrico Letta was clear in his message from the stage a few hundred meters away: Giorgia Meloni’s right is backward-looking, authoritarian and nationalist. Italy must look ahead. “We can catch them again! We can win on Sunday!” HOPEFUL: Stefano Giordani (20) hopes for a center/left victory, but he does not hide that it looks difficult. Photo: Simen Ekern 20-year-old Stefano Giordani, activist in the Democratic Party’s youth movement, hopes Letta is right. – The right-wing side looks towards Victor Orbán and Vladimir Putin. We want a policy oriented towards Europe, he says. It is the choice Giordani hopes a majority of voters will agree with him on, but he does not hide that it looks difficult. – In Italy, you always predict victory for the right before elections. Right this year, I have to admit that it seems like a correct prediction. Climate change and election frenzy The author Roberto Saviano is among those who believe that the left has not succeeded in presenting an alternative. “The left is asking people to vote against the right, but they lack a political vision or an economic alternative,” he claimed in an article in The Guardian earlier this week. CLIMATE MARCH: Fridays For Future in Rome on Friday this week. After the worst summer of drought and flooding in Italy in living memory, one could imagine that the climate battle could have been such a vision. Enrico Letta has talked about climate, but not enough to satisfy the 30,000 young people who filled Rome’s streets on Friday with slogans that demanded a completely different climate awareness from all politicians. 18-year-old Lucrezia, with slogans against melting glaciers on a cardboard poster around her neck, will vote for the first time this year. Home sitting is not applicable. WANTS TO BE HEARD: Lucrezia is 18 years old, and will be voting for the first time. Photo: Antonia Cimini – Voting is a right, and rights must be used, otherwise they can disappear, she says. Nevertheless: It will be without any particular enthusiasm. – There is no one who represents us, there is no one who gives us hope. The young are lost in this political reality, which does not relate to us. They must listen to us. It’s serious now. It has been an election campaign marked by some eager attempts to capture young voters. 85-year-old Silvio Berlusconi’s entry on TikTok, for example, was noticed. But that won’t do, shouts Sara Sessa, one of the organizers of the climate march, from the stage. – Everyone wants our votes, they have gotten on TikTok to get the young people’s votes, but it doesn’t work! We want to be heard, we want to participate, because politics is created in the streets! METRO ACTION: Sara Sessa from Fridays For Future in Rome. Photo: Simen Ekern Five-star inspired Politics may create in the streets too, but right now a lot is decided at the ballot box. The battle has been dominated by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition on one side and Enrico Letta’s center/left party on the other. The opinion polls have pointed clearly towards a far-right victory, but Italian politics, as usual, has room for surprises. This year it may once again be the Five Star Movement that stands for the biggest. The populist party turned the political reality in the country upside down in the 2013 election. They received almost a quarter of the vote, after an election campaign in which few of the competitors had taken them seriously. This is something party leader Giuseppe Conte hopes to repeat on Monday night. “They thought we were dead, they’ve been wrong again,” said an excited Conte from the stage at the end of the election campaign in Rome on Friday night, referring to high-profile politicians who left the Five Star Movement when the new elections became a reality earlier this summer. STRONG FINAL CHARGE: Unofficial opinion polls suggest that the Five Star Movement, led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, can make a good choice. Photo: Cecilia Fabiano / AP Due to Italian election rules, the latest opinion polls are two weeks old, and give the Five Stars around 12-13 percent support. But “unofficial” measurements have been floating around all over the place in recent days. They suggest that Conte’s team has been successful with an election campaign that has been heavily concentrated in the south of the country, where many appreciate the party’s brand issue – a kind of minimum citizen’s wage. A better turnout could ensure a less convincing victory for the right, and create a more uncertain situation. Back in Piazza del Popolo, the young center/left activist Stefano Giordani is not very optimistic about cross-party cooperation to prevent a far-right government. After intense bickering over several years, but perhaps especially this summer, it is difficult to envisage a formalized collaboration between the Five Star Movement and PD. – It’s a shame to say it, but I think it’s too late. That door is closed, says the 20-year-old. CAN WIN: Giorgia Meloni on the election campaign in Caserta Photo: Simen Ekern Most things still indicate that it is the right-wing queen who will become Italy’s next prime minister. Tonight, Giorgia Meloni and her supporters gather for an election vigil at the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome. The first election day polls are expected at 11 p.m., while the final result will not be available until Monday.
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A chaotic election campaign is over
