Italy Election Gives Big Lift to Far Right and Populists

Italy Election Gives Big Lift to Far Right and Populists
Taken together, the votes cast for the Five Star Movement, the League
and its post-fascist coalition partner, the Brothers of Italy party, run by Giorgia Meloni, depicted a dark mood in Italy and deep frustration with the governing, pro-Europe, Democratic Party of the center left.
Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at Luiss University in Rome, said
that if the results held, the Five Star Movement would find itself in "a pivotal position." With previously solid-seeming coalitions now fluid, he said, Five Star was in the driver’s seat.
The Five Star Movement will be the pillar of the next legislature." Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Salvini
and Ms. Meloni ran together with the idea of governing together.
One thing seemed clear, however: Any government will be difficult to form without the
insurgent Five Star Movement, a web-based, populist party less than a decade old.
By JASON HOROWITZMARCH 4, 2018
ROME — Italians registered their dismay with the European political establishment on Sunday, handing a majority of votes in a national election to hard-right
and populist forces that ran a campaign fueled by anti-immigrant anger.
Alessandro Di Battista said that A triumph of the Five Star Movement,
Parliament said that We are surely in front of an extraordinary result,
The Five Star Movement appealed to voters on both the left and the right, especially in the country’s poorer southern regions.