Berlusconi Stages Comeback in Italy's Mayoral Elections

(Bloomberg) -- The second and final round of municipal elections in Italy on Sunday showed a resurgence in support for 80-year-old former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and its center-right allies.

Berlusconi-backed candidates won runoffs in mayoral races across the country including Genoa and Verona, while an independent candidate was ahead in Parma, marking a significant setback for Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s ruling Democratic Party, or PD, which is led by his predecessor Matteo Renzi.

“It was a solid performance by the center-right bloc, which shows that Berlusconi is still a significant political force,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of Teneo Intelligence in London. “If the center-right parties can unite under a single leader they would be a force to be reckoned with at the general elections.”

The mayoral vote tested the political mood in a country where economic recovery is still weak, unemployment is high and anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment is growing, fueled by waves of migrants from North Africa.

Voter disaffection with Gentiloni’s government wasn’t helped by the country’s latest banking crisis, which puts taxpayer money at risk. On Sunday, as Italians headed to voting booths, the government was forced to pass an emergency decree committing as much as 17 billion euros ($19 billion) to clean up two failed banks in the northern Veneto region, the nation’s biggest rescue on record.

Italy’s Stalingrad

Over 4 million eligible voters were asked to pick mayors in 111 towns and cities including Berlusconi’s heartlands in the north and the strongholds of the PD party in Liguria and Tuscany. Candidates from or supported by Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the anti-immigrant Northern League and their junior ally Brothers of Italy confirmed good results shown in first round ballots and even won in Sesto San Giovanni, a city near Milan known as “Italy’s Stalingrad” for its historically strong left-wing leanings.

The Berlusconi bloc is running at about 30 percent in nationwide polls, neck-and-neck with the anti-euro Five Star Movement and Renzi’s PD. Berlusconi is seeking to overturn a ban on running for public office that was the result of his 2013 tax-fraud conviction.

Italy is due to hold a general election in the first half of next year, though the rules that will govern the vote are unclear. A multi-party deal to make the electoral system for the parliament in Rome more stable unraveled earlier this month. The existing system is purely proportional and the main parties want to change it in order to produce less fragmented legislatures.

“The more likely scenario is that the existing system will be retained,” Federico Santi, a political analyst at Eurasia Group in London, said in a note on Friday. “This bodes poorly for political stability and reform.”

--With assistance from Jerrold Colten

To contact the reporters on this story: Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net, Alessandra Migliaccio in Rome at amigliaccio@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at fobrien@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen, Kevin Costelloe