WITH around two-thirds of the votes from Italy’s general election counted by the morning of March 5th,it was already clear that populism had won.
The leading party was the Five Star Movement (M5S). Capitalising on the anger of the south and the young at Italy’s arthritic economy, the M5S appeared to have broken through the 30% ceiling that it has long failed to breach in the polls. The other grand winner from a poll that will shake the rest of Europe was the tough proper, and populist Northern League,riding a wave of alarm in Italy over the arrival in recent years of hundreds of thousands of migrants. Taken with a third populist party, the far-proper Brothers of Italy, or anti-establishment parties look to have won comfortably over 50% of the vote.
Projections of the effect on parliament,which could yet prove unreliable because of Italy’s modern and complex electoral system, showed it to be hung, or with the M5S occupying more than a third of the seats in both houses; able to block any government it opposed. As one of its leading members,...
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Source: economist.com