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What happened?

There was a surprise in Sardinia’s regional elections last weekend: center-left representative Alessandra Todde prevailed over center-right candidate Paolo Truzzu. The result was extremely close: Todde received 45.4 percent, only about 3,000 votes more than her closest opponent.

Thanks to Todde’s victory, Sardinia is ruled by the centre-left after five years. Todde is a member of the left-wing populist Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and served as a member of the national enterprise ministry in the Giuseppe Conte government. She will be the first woman ever to serve as regional president in Sardinia. It is also the first time since 2015 that the centre-left has managed to win over a region with a centre-right office holder.

Why is the result in Sardinia considered important?

Purely in terms of political influence, the elections in Sardinia are not considered particularly important in Italy. The island region has only about 1.5 million inhabitants, making it one of the smaller regions of the country. Yet Italian politicians always look forward to Sardinia when the elections take place there. The results regularly anticipate national trends of recent years. In view of the European elections in June, there was a lot of tension in the run-up.

Todde’s victory is especially important for Italy’s struggling centre-left parties. Unlike the 2022 parliamentary elections, there was an alliance between the two major left-wing parties M5S and Partito Democratico (PD). If a closed center-left alliance also existed at the national level, this would have important consequences: in the elections about a year and a half ago, an alliance of PD, M5S and smaller left-wing parties would have performed better than the current ruling parties. right-wing alliance.

What does the result mean for the centre-right?

For the centre-right coalition, the elections in Sardinia can be seen as a defeat. The Italian media singled out one person in particular as the big loser: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Firstly, the result in Sardinia was Meloni’s first defeat since she was elected Prime Minister. What was perhaps even more bitter for them than the defeat was the way it came about.

Meloni had previously fallen out with coalition partner Matteo Salvini: she opposed Salvini’s plan to send incumbent regional president Christian Solinas back into the race and pushed for a nomination from Paolo Truzzu – unlike Solinas, a member of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Ultimately, Salvini relented. The fact that Truzzu surprisingly missed out on victory is also a defeat for Meloni within her coalition.

Externally, Meloni and Salvini still appear united. “Defeats are always a shame, but they are also an opportunity to reflect and improve,” Meloni writes about X. “We will also learn from this.” And Salvini reiterated at a press conference on Tuesday that the government is “unshakable.”

How united Fratelli and Salvini’s League actually are remains unclear. The Truzzu case is not the first topic on which the opinions of Meloni and Salvini differ sharply. Another conflict topic is aid to Ukraine. While the Prime Minister supports this, Salvini opposes it.

Rhetoric between the two has also diverged recently: while Meloni has appeared more moderate since her election as prime minister, Salvini is adding fuel to the fire on several sensitive issues. Most recently at the end of the week, when he stood up to President Sergio Mattarella and defended officers after police brutality in Pisa and Florence.

What does the result mean for the future?

There is a sense of optimism in the left camp after the surprise victory. “The wind is turning,” PD boss Elly Schlein rejoiced. Her party’s collaboration with the M5S shows that there is an alternative to the current government. The newly elected Todde was also optimistic: “An alliance between PD and M5S is the only possible path,” said the regional president. The people want this unity; the results have shown that it can work.

As with the right-wing alliance, it is not clear how stable the cooperation will be in the long term. The two left-wing parties working together at a regional level is nothing new: the two parties already worked together in Umbria in 2019 and in Liguria in 2020. As a result, cooperation at the national level has still been difficult. The differences of opinion on important issues are too great: as with the right-wing alliance, the PD and M5S also disagree on the Ukraine issue. While the PD supports arms deliveries, the M5S is against it.

It remains unclear how representative the result in Sardinia this year is for the vote in Italy. As the Italian ‘Post’ writes, the outcome could have depended heavily on the two candidates. Despite her membership of the populist M5S, Todde is considered moderate and therefore eligible by a broad mass of voters. Truzzu, on the other hand, is said to have a rather bad reputation on the island after a mixed period as mayor of Cagliari.

What the actual balance of power is in Italian politics will become clear in the coming weeks. The next regional elections will take place on March 10 in Abruzzo. “We can also win there,” said PD leader Schlein – with Luciano d’Amico, the center left is once again sending a candidate into the race, behind whom the PD and M5S are united. His opponent: incumbent Marco Marsilio of Melonis Fratelli d’Italia – which puts pressure on the prime minister again.