When the abstention rate is so high (in Puglia only 41 percent of those entitled to vote went to the polls, in Campania and Veneto slightly more), the opinion vote is reduced to a minimum and the outcome of any election is mainly influenced by local factors and the influence of lists and candidates. It is therefore not easy to draw a “national” balance sheet of the regional round that has just concluded, nor to identify a trend that can be said to be representative of the rest of the country in the feelings that led the minority of voters from three, albeit important, Italian regions to vote. Nonetheless, some considerations can be made.

When a minority decides

The first concerns abstention, which has now reached record levels, at such a rate as to threaten the very stability of democracy. We are the minority that decides for the majority, and it matters little that that majority consciously chooses to stay at home. It is clear that we are talking about a complex drift, not only in Italy, but there remains an urgency to identify remedies, if not to eliminate the distortion at least to stem it. The first could be to say enough to the “chop” elections (the autumn regional round that has just ended was celebrated on four different dates, spaced a few weeks apart) and introduce a single election day, which brings together all the consultations in a single moment: political, regional, administrative and any repealing referendums. Participation would not magically return to the 75-80 percent of a few years ago, but it would certainly benefit.

Unfortunately, however, the Greek cries about abstentionism last from 3pm on Monday, when the polls open for counting, to the following morning: then, as always, nothing happens.

The vote that splits the center-right and agitates the center-left

As far as the parties are concerned, the picture is contradictory for everyone. In the centre-right we witnessed a debacle in the South in two regions considered difficult, but in which gaps of these proportions had not been taken into account in the slightest. It’s one thing to lose, it’s another to be humiliated. It is the effect of an electoral campaign conducted in a downwards manner, with front runners chosen poorly and above all late, constantly giving the impression of considering the elections already lost from the start. In a vote in which the lists and individual regional councilor candidates count so much, defining the structures only at the last moment gives the opponent an advantage that is difficult to overcome, because all the local potentates always move towards whoever is perceived as the winner.

Zaia’s message for Salvini

Brothers of Italy didn’t go very well: Cirielli in Campania was almost overtaken by Fico and in Veneto the exploit of last year’s European elections was not repeated, when the prime minister’s party obtained 38 percent. But “Veneto is Veneto”, they will say, and there the League continues to plunder. An excellent result for Salvini, then? Yes and no, because in Veneto he held that League which embodies a political tradition different from that of the Captain: Zaia’s pragmatic regionalism against Salvini’s national-sovereignism. The former achieved a brilliant success in Veneto on Sunday and Monday, the latter was defeated in the South as it had been in recent weeks in Tuscany, Calabria and Marche. A non-secondary element – and which will not please the secretary – is that the terrible result in the South definitively sinks what remains of the autonomy reform designed by Calderoli, already crippled by various rulings of the Consulta.

Schlein’s internal rivals

Even for the center-left the picture is multifaceted. It is true that the “wide field” achieved gratifying successes in Puglia and Campania (and in Veneto it went less worse than feared) and that the coalition has demonstrated that it can present itself with a shared program and candidates capable of keeping the different souls together. From the “stubbornly unitary” perspective dear to the secretary of the Democratic Party, this is undoubtedly a success.

It is equally true, however, that the winners were above all leaders such as Conte, De Luca senior and Decaro, who in the party and in the coalition embody the figure of Elly Schlein’s internal competitors. Conte has never abandoned the idea of ​​being the progressive candidate for the premiership (the latest YouTrend polls on possible center-left primaries put him well ahead of the secretary of the Democratic Party); Decaro is one of the champions of the internal reformist front and this year as an MEP in Brussels he has repeatedly voted in dissonance with the indications of the Nazarene. It is almost superfluous to mention De Luca’s outbursts and attacks against the current course of the party.

Overall, therefore, a composite picture emerges that does not decisively alter the national balance and postpones the real watershed to the referendum on justice in March, which is truly a harbinger of consequences. If anything, the poor result of the center-right in the South could induce the government majority to accelerate the electoral reform project whose main objective is to secure governability, today called into question by the current design of the senatorial constituencies in the southern regions envisaged by the Rosatellum.