European election results map. Green denotes provinces with a League plurality, Red denotes provinces with a Democratic plurality, yellow denotes those with a Five Star plurality, gray denotes those with a Regionalist plurality.
The 2019 European Parliament election in Italy were held on 26 May 2019, electing members of the 9th Italian delegation to the European Parliament as part of the European elections held across the European Union.
Two levels were introduced: a national level to divide the seats among parties and a constituency level to distribute them among candidates in open lists. Five constituencies were established, each including 2–5 regions and each electing a fixed number of MEPs. At national level, seats are divided between party lists using the largest remainder method with Hare quota. Seats are allocated to parties and then to their most voted candidates.
In the run-up to the 2009 European Parliament election, the Italian Parliament introduced a national threshold of 4%. An exception was granted for parties representing some linguistic minorities as such lists can be connected with one of the major parties, combining their votes, provided that those parties reach the 4% threshold and that candidates from minority parties obtain a sufficient number of votes, no less than 50,000 for the main candidate.
Background
In 2014, the governing Democratic Party (PD) of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi won the election with 40.8% of the vote and 31 seats, followed by the Five Star Movement (M5S) with 21.2% and 17 seats and Forza Italia (FI) with 16.8% and 13 seats. As a result, the PD was the second largest national party in the European Parliament by number of seats after the German CDU/CSU and the largest among the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D).[1] The PD's score was also the best result for an Italian party in a nationwide election since the 1958 general election, when the Christian Democracy (DC) won 42.4% of the vote.
However, after less than three years from the 2014 electoral landslide, Renzi was forced to resign after the defeat in the constitutional referendum and his foreign affairs minister Paolo Gentiloni was appointed new head of government in December 2016.[2][3] Moreover, the 2018 general election was characterized by a strong showing of populist parties. The centre-right coalition, led by Matteo Salvini's right-wing League, emerged with a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate while the anti-establishment M5S led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes; and Renzi's centre-left came only third, with the worst electoral result of its history.[4][5] However, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.[6] After three months of negotiation, a government was finally formed on 1 June by the M5S and the League, with the M5S-linked independent Giuseppe Conte as Prime Minister and Di Maio and Salvini Deputy Prime Ministers.[7][8]
^Running as Democratic Party–We Are Europeans–PES and including Art.1, Demo.S and Futura. The list is also in alliance with the French-speaking minority list ApE from Aosta Valley, composed of UV, UVP, ALPE, SA and EPAV.
Poll results are listed according to the date of publication of the survey. Detailed data are usually published in the official website of the Italian government. The publication of opinion polls during the last 15 days of the electoral campaign is forbidden by Italian law.
^In the 2018 Italian general election LeU was a joint list, mainly comprising Art.1 and SI. Some polls have included Art.1 or SI or both, sometimes together, instead of LeU. Since April 2019 some polls started to track SI along with PRC and Art.1 separately. Art.1 finally chose to run with PD.
^In the 2018 Italian general election PaP was a joint list, including PRC and PCI, which left the alliance a few months later. Some polls have included these two parties within PaP and/or CP. In March 2019 CP's leader Luigi de Magistris announced it would not participate in the election. In April PaP decided not to run in the election.
^Until March 2019 the results refer to the proposed joint list formed by FdV, IiC (which finally decided to side with +E) and GI, since April to EV, joint list of FdV, Pos and GI.
Map showing the most voted party in each municipalitySeat totals by constituency. As this is a PR election, seat totals are determined by the national popular vote.
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