Italy Is Rolling Out a New Electoral System. Here's How It Works

(Bloomberg) -- When Italians go to the polls on Sunday they’ll be voting under a new electoral law, adding an extra element of uncertainty to the outcome. The system was now changed three times in five years, so pollsters have no precedents to help them work out how shifts in voting patterns will translate into seats.

Here’s what you need to know.

What’s changed?

The new rules combine elements of a British-style first-past-the-post system with the more continental proportional representation or PR. Just over a third of seats in each chamber will be decided by winner-takes-all votes in individual constituencies. The rest will be allocated in proportion to the number of votes each party receives. More or less.

Go on?

Parties need to reach 3 percent of the vote to qualify for PR seats, and a coalition needs 10 percent. Seats are then allocated on a national basis. The lawmakers who’ll take up those seats are drawn from party lists in dozens of separate districts across the country -- but you don’t need to worry about that.

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So they elect the Senate and the lower house together?

Right. There are 630 seats in the lower house and 315 in the senate. You need to be 25 years old to vote for the Senate, for the lower house it’s 18. Under the Italian constitution, the two chambers have equal weight -- the next prime minister will need to win confidence votes in both houses.

Italians abroad elect 12 deputies and 6 senators through a purely proportional system. The mainstream parties usually fare better in that competition. They’ll probably also do better in the Senate than the lower house, since the anti-establishment Five Star Movement’s support is concentrated among young voters.

So how many times do you vote?

Once for each house. And each vote is counted twice, once on the PR side and once for your individual constituency.

Coalition partners like Forza Italia and League will have individual tallies to determine their share of the PR seats, and then pool their votes in the first-past-the-post contests.

What’s the thinking behind the system?

It encourages parties to form coalitions -- because that increases their chances of winning the first-past-the-post votes. That will mean more seats for Berlusconi’s four-party alliance. And fewer for Five Star, which has refused to strike deals.

The governing Democratic Party could also lose out. A left-wing splinter group, Free and Equal, has refused to join its coalition.

In theory, it should also mean there’s a good chance that the winner ends up with a workable majority and promote stable government.

Will it?

Probably not. The Italian electorate is split three ways, so it’s unlikely that any group will get enough first-past-the-post seats to outweigh the share of PR seats.

Analysts reckon you’ll need about 40 percent of the proportional vote and at least 70 percent of the first-past-the-post districts for a majority. Berlusconi’s bloc was leading with about 36 percent before the polling blackout began on Feb. 17.

Why does Italy keep changing the rules?

The 2006, 2008 and 2013 elections were fought under a system that awarded a large majority in the lower house to whichever party came first, however slim the margin of victory. That was struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2013, judging the concentration of power was unjustified.

In its place, then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi proposed a two-round ballot in which the top two groups nationally would go forward to a run-off vote to control the lower house. But that was also struck down by the court last year, leaving the current premier, Paolo Gentiloni, scrambling to agree a new system in time for this year’s election.

There are already grumblings of discontent and talk of another electoral reform this year if, as many expect, the election leads to gridlock.

To contact the reporter on this story: Marco Bertacche in Milan at mbertacche@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ven Ram at vram1@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Alessandra Migliaccio

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