Story highlights
Bersani's center-left alliance leads Berlusconi's center-right alliance in polls
But Berlusconi's recent improvement could make for a tightly contested race
Elections are early because the ex-prime minister resigned and parliament dissolved
Italy’s parliamentary elections kick off Sunday, with polls suggesting the center-left – led by Pier Luigi Bersani – is on track to defeat controversial three-time prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
But Berlusconi’s rise in the polls in recent weeks, combined with widespread public disillusionment, means that nothing about the race is a foregone conclusion.
Alliance-building
The two-day election is a four-horse race between political coalitions led by Bersani, Berlusconi, outgoing premier Mario Monti, and the anti-establishment movement led by ex-comedian Beppe Grillo.
Polls are banned within two weeks of the elections, but the most recent ones had Bersani holding onto a slender lead over Berlusconi. Grillo was a distant third.
Italy’s political system encourages the forming of alliances.
The center-left alliance dominated by Bersani’s Democratic Party also includes the more left-wing Left Ecology Freedom party.
The 61-year-old Bersani comes across as “bluff and homespun, and that’s part of his appeal – or not, depending on your point of view,” said political analyst James Walston, department chair of international relations at the American University of Rome.
He described Bersani, a former communist, as a “revised apparatchik,” saying the reform-minded socialist was paradoxically “far more of a free marketeer than even people on the right.”
At second place in the polls is the center-right alliance led by Berlusconi’s PdL, in coalition with the right-wing, anti-immigration Northern League.
Berlusconi gave conflicting signals as to whether he was running for the premiership, indicating that he would seek the job if his coalition won, but contradicting that on other occasions.
Berlusconi, the septuagenarian playboy billionaire nicknamed “Il Cavaliere,” campaigned as a Milan court weighed his appeal against a tax fraud conviction, for which he was sentenced to four years in jail last year.
Because the case dates to July 2006, the statute of limitations will expire this year, meaning there is a good chance that none of the defendants will serve any prison time.
Why are elections taking place now?
Italian parliamentarians are elected for five-year terms, with the current one due to end in April.
But in December, the PdL withdrew its support of the reformist government led by Monti, saying it was pursuing policies that “were too German-centric.”
Monti subsequently resigned, and the parliament was dissolved.