Turnout: 63.91%
About this election
Italy held snap parliamentary elections on 25 September 2022 after the collapse of Mario Draghi's broad national-unity government. The right-wing coalition of Brothers of Italy (FdI), the Lega and Forza Italia won a commanding majority — 235 of 400 Chamber seats and 112 of 200 Senate seats. Brothers of Italy became the largest single party with 26.00% of the vote, its best-ever result, and its leader Giorgia Meloni became prime minister on 22 October 2022 — Italy's first female premier and the first leader with post-fascist roots to head the government since the war. The Democratic Party led the opposition with 19.07%, and the Five Star Movement took 15.43%. Turnout fell to 63.91%, a post-war low.
Italy uses a parallel (mixed-member) system for both chambers: roughly a third of seats are filled in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post and the remainder by proportional representation. The 2020 referendum had cut the Chamber from 630 to 400 seats and the Senate from 315 to 200, so 2022 was the first election under the smaller parliament. Parties need 3% of the national vote for proportional seats and coalitions 10%; both chambers are elected at once and a government must hold the confidence of each.
The decisive factor was that the right ran as a single pre-electoral coalition while the centre-left did not. FdI, the Lega and Forza Italia presented joint candidates in the first-past-the-post seats, sweeping most of them, whereas the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement and the centrist Action-Italia Viva ran separately and split the anti-right vote. Within the winning coalition, Meloni's FdI had overtaken Matteo Salvini's Lega and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia to become the dominant partner.
The election followed the fall of Draghi's technocratic government in July 2022 and was fought amid an energy crisis and high inflation linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Meloni combined a hard line on immigration and traditional values with reassurances on Italy's pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine and broadly pro-EU stance and fiscal responsibility, calming fears about a party descended from the post-war neo-fascist tradition.
Meloni's accession was historic on two counts: the first woman to lead an Italian government, and the first prime minister from a party tracing its lineage to the post-war Italian Social Movement. In office she pursued a more pragmatic course than her campaign rhetoric had suggested, maintaining strong support for Ukraine and working within EU fiscal rules while pressing a restrictive migration agenda.
The March 2018 election had produced a hung parliament: the Five Star Movement won the most votes (32.7%) and the centre-right the most seats, with the Democratic Party reduced to third. That led first to an M5S-Lega populist government under Giuseppe Conte, then to an M5S-PD coalition, and finally to Draghi's 2021-2022 unity government, whose collapse triggered the 2022 vote.
Italian Ministry of the Interior (Ministero dell'Interno) — elezioni.interno.gov.it.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.