To cite the article:
Emanuele, V. & Improta, M. (2022). Back to the (conservative) origins: the 2022 municipal election in Palermo. Pôle Sud, 57, 85-97. https://doi.org/10.3917/psud.057.0085
The article has been published on Pôle Sud – Revue de Science Politique de l’Europe Méridionale and can be accessed here.
Introduction
Palermo is a political laboratory. It presents a clear moderate-conservative profile regarding voting behaviour since the early stages of Italy’s democratic instauration. After a continued centrality of Christian Democracy (DC) in the so-called First Republic and despite a structural advantage of centre-right political formations since the 1990s, the city was controlled by a key political figure: Leoluca Orlando, the incumbent of the 2022 electoral competition with centre-left positions on most crucial issues, yet the leader of civic lists that have traditionally obtained large consensus among Palermo’s citizens (Azzolina 2009). This study contributes to the electoral research on Palermo by investigating the outcome of the 2022 municipal election held on June 12, 2022. Along these lines, the study is structured as follows. Firstly, it illustrates the main features of Palermo’s electoral history by emphasising the role of Orlando’s legacy and the centre-right ruling class. Secondly, the study presents the electoral supply for the competition by highlighting the coalition strategies followed by the main political formations. Then, the third section deals with the electoral campaign, characterised by left parties’ disengagement and limited issue entrepreneurship. Moreover, the fourth part presents the electoral results, focusing particularly on the high abstentionism recorded, the vote shares obtained by candidates and parties, and the aftermath of the election. Then, a concluding section follows.