(Bloomberg) -- The rightist League party of Matteo Salvini made strong gains in a regional election, while its national government partner the Five Star Movement got less than half the support it had in last year’s national vote, according to almost final results.
The candidate for the center-right alliance including the League and Forza Italia party of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi got about 42 percent in the southern region of Basilicata, an area that has long been a stronghold of the center-left. The League which is allied with the center-right in local entities across Italy obtained about 19 percent of the vote, results from over 90 percent of polling stations show.
The Five Star party of fellow Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio suffered yet another blow as it slumps in a series of regional elections this year and in national opinion polls. Its candidate obtained about 20 percent of the votes compared with the 44 percent that the party got in Basilicata in the general elections held in March of last year.
Nationally, Five Star fell to 21 percent support in an SWG survey last week, narrowly overtaken by the center-left Democratic Party for the first time since 2017.
Recent local elections did not show a “brilliant performance” from Five Star, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in an interview with La Stampa. He added that the local vote result doesn’t amount to a threat to the government stability.
Salvini campaigned heavily in Basilicata ahead of Sunday’s vote, boycotting a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Rome to flag his displeasure at Five Star’s embrace of the Asian giant.
Salvini’s score in Basilicata extends his efforts to turn the League into a national party. It was Salvini who changed the name of a party previously called the Northern League, and which used to campaign for northern secession.
The center-left candidate obtained about 33 percent of the vote with the Democratic Party, the alliance’s main force and the biggest opposition party in the Italian parliament, getting about 8 percent.
To contact the reporters on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net;Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Kevin Costelloe, Ross Larsen
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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