Long lines of voters stand at polling stations in Italy for the parliamentary elections. Graziella (72) and Renato (79), a couple from the Roman district of San Giovanni, a neighborhood in the shadow of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, have just started voting in Giosué Carducci primary school. They don’t want their last name in the paper. San Giovanni is a neighborhood that has traditionally had a mixed voter population, as evidenced by voter responses at the polls.
Graziella has “never seen such long lines before,” she says — proof that many Italians want radical change, she says. By noon on Sunday afternoon, more than 19 percent had already voted. That is in line with the previous election, in 2018. Four years ago, almost 73 percent of Italians finally voted.
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Graziella and her husband both voted for Giorgia Meloni. “Because I want a country that functions, and where people have not only rights but also obligations,” she says. In the same breath Graziella brings the conversation to the theme of immigration. She says she feels a lot of unease “because of all those Africans on the street.” Are they bothering her? “They drink beer during the day,” Graziella says, “and they carry an iPad – how can they afford that, if they are starving to death in their country of origin?”
Her husband Renato adds that he therefore puts great trust in Meloni’s political ally Matteo Salvini: “He always puts the interests of Italy and the Italians first.”
female voters
In general, more men than women vote for the Brothers of Italy, the party that Giorgia Meloni leads. Whether her womanhood convinces more female voters today has not been specifically investigated in advance by the polling agencies. The voters who vote for her seem to do so because of her far-right positions. And those who don’t like those political ideas don’t seem to be changed by her female leadership either.
I want a country that functions, where people have not only rights but also obligations
Graziella voter in Rome
Loretta (74), for example, worked in the insurance industry until her retirement, and for many years voted for Alleanza Nazionale (“National Alliance”), the predecessor of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. “But Meloni is too extreme for me,” says Loretta, at the exit of the polling station in the primary school Giuseppe Verdi in Rome. “I am very feminist, and Meloni is not. I chose the golden mean, and voted for the center bloc of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and former Minister Carlo Calenda.” She hopes that whoever will also govern Italy in the future will tackle the “numerous problems, and not give priority to self-interest over the well-being of this country. But to be honest, I am very sobered by this political generation.”
Atmosphere in the country
Several voters prefer not to talk to the foreign press at the exit of the polling stations. One bleached woman even shouts loudly: “Return to your own country!” Such a statement reflects the atmosphere in the country, says Emma (36) shaking her head, a journalist from Rome who comes to vote with her husband, and also does not want to give her last name.
Emma, a woman with long, dark brown hair and a bright red jacket, has brought her two daughters to the polling station. One girl is hopping around in the street, the youngest is sleeping in the pram. With Meloni, Italy would have a woman at the helm for the first time, but “being a woman is not enough,” says Emma, “especially since this lady plans to abolish half of our hard-won rights.”
She looks anxiously at her young daughters: “I can’t imagine my daughters having to grow up in a country that denies the values of the anti-fascist resistance movement.” Is there a threat of authoritarian rule in Italy again? Emma does not fear that so much, “but the thought that the doors of the Palazzo Chigi government building will soon open for a party that descends from the neo-fascist MSI (Italian Social Movement, ed.) gives me cold shivers.”
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