Italian Right-Wing Party Emerges With Strong Chance to Top September Poll

After the downfall of Italy's outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who resigned last month after losing support for his broad coalition, the right-wing party Brothers of Italy seems set to win big at the snap elections called for late September.

The coalition bloc formed by Brothers of Italy and two other hard-right nationalists and populists parties—including Matteo Salvini's League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia—neared 50 percent support in a poll conducted by Italy's Tecne research institute.

Almost half of the support enjoyed by the right-wing bloc (24.3 percent) could be credited solely to the Brothers of Italy, while the League and Forza Italia trailed with 12.9 and 11.4 percent of the vote respectively.

The Democratic Party (PD), Italy's main center-left party, received 23.5 percent of the vote, according to the poll, while the Five Star Movement, a populist left-wing party, gathered 10.2 percent of the vote.

Another poll from Lab2101 puts the PD in the lead with 25.6 percent of the vote over Brothers of Italy's 22.3 percent, though the right-wing bloc still had strong overall support at 47.7 percent, with the center-left coalition trailing on 32.4 percent.

Why Are Italians Heading to the Polls?

Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, was a technocrat summoned into Italian politics to steer the country in a time of crisis.

For 18 months, he brought a period of relative stability to Italy, even as the country, as well as the entire European continent and the rest of the world, struggled with pandemic-related supply chain issues, the explosion of the war in Ukraine and rising inflation.

Last month, during a week of political turmoil, Draghi lost first the support of coalition member Five Star Movement, then that of the two major right-wing parties that had initially backed his unity government. On both occasions, the prime minister decided to tend his resignations, which were finally accepted by Italy's president Sergio Mattarella on July 21.

The withdrawal of support from the League and Forza Italia for Draghi's unity government was seen by many in Italy as an opportunistic move from the parties, accused of putting their chances of winning a potential election over the stability of the country.

What's Behind Brothers of Italy's Rise?

The popularity of the right-wing bloc in Italy is widely credited to the inability of center-left and left-wing parties to come together to offer a valid alternative. The once-popular Five Star Movement effectively collapsed last year after several broken promises, losing the mass support it had gathered a few years ago.

But the way Brothers of Italy, in particular, has grown its support base in recent years tells a different story about where the country is at right now.

Brothers of Italy, a party that was born from the ashes of Benito Mussolini's Italian Social Movement, has gone from gaining 4 percent of the vote in the 2018 election to now being at the helm of a coalition expected to be backed by 50 percent of voters.

The party alone is estimated to be backed by 24.3 percent of voters, according to the poll mentioned by Bloomberg, which means Brothers of Italy has the single highest number of prospected votes and could potentially obtain a landslide victory in the September election.

But how did the party gain such support?

Brothers of Italy was the only party to remain out of Draghi's coalition, distinguishing itself as an outsider within the political system—a position that generally seems to favor parties in Italy, if the success of the Five Star Movement years ago can be taken as an example.

The appeal of the party to Italian voters is one that's common to right-wing populist parties across the world: blaming immigrants for the economic problems faced by the country and engaging a common sense of unhappiness and frustration among citizens only to redirect it towards the rest of the establishment.

Brothers of Italy's leader, Giorgia Meloni, has long presented herself to voters as one of the people, a leader of the working class who, because she didn't go to university and didn't have an elite education, is closer to the people than the radical left-wing politicians.

Meloni, as head of the party, is now widely favored to become Italy's next prime minister, despite being considered an extremely controversial character in Italian politics.

Meloni is a pro-natalist who's long been campaigning against adoption for gay couples and against LGBTQ+ rights while promoting the traditional family through policies aimed at increasing the country's birth rate, including the introduction of a €400-per-month family allowance ($399).

She's considered a supporter of Hungarian nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban and has kept close ties with French far-right party National Rally and Spain's VOX, despite denying the idea that Brothers of Italy is a far-right party.

Meloni has also been accused of not severing ties with the fascist roots of her party, though she has repeatedly rejected these claims and has distanced herself from Mussolini and his actions.

The party's success now is in part also due to the way Meloni has softened her image and harsher stances in recent years. Brothers of Italy's leader now pledges to defend the right to abortion and gay civil unions, a reversal of her earlier positions, has no intention of threatening Italy's position in the EU and promises to continue supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

The potential victory of the Brothers of Italy within the right-wing bloc at the incoming September election would represent the first time a party considered to belong to the far-right leads a major Eurozone economy.