La Lega “nazionale” di Salvini alla conquista elettorale del Meridione

Abstract

In the last European elections the League became the first party in Italy also because, for the first time, it collected a large number of votes in the South, exceeding 20% in the Southern Italian regions. In this article, we try to evaluate whether that success is temporary or if it will consolidate over time. In other words, the central question is whether the vote to the League in Southern Italy is weak and volatile or if it represents instead the first step towards its establishment also in this area of the country. In details, we try to verify if the success of the League in the South can be related to the traditional aspects of the parties’ organization - such as the territorial roots and the recruitment of political personnel, who obtain in the electoral competition personal votes improving the success of the list. The analysis has been conducted through macro- and microanalysis tools. The analysis of the preference vote distribution highlights the electoral contribution offered by all candidates to the European Parliament by region and size of the municipalities. The description of some emblematic local cases stresses the dynamics through which some local candidates for the European Parliament have contributed to increasing the political consensus of the League in Southern Italy.