Italian right consolidates its wide lead in polls one month before elections

The coalition of right-wing Italian parties led by Giorgia Meloni’s ultra-nationalist Brothers of Italy continues to comfortably lead the polls ahead of the September 25 elections with almost 50 percent of voting intention and more than 20 percentage points ahead of the fragmented left-wing bloc.

The latest poll by the Tecne institute collected by Bloomberg gives Meloni’s group — which is joined by the League and Forza Italia, of former prime ministers Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi — 49.8 percent of the vote against 30 percent for the left-wing coalition led by the Democratic Party of also former prime minister Enrico Letta. The anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5S) barely exceeded 10 percent of the vote.

The poll continues the upward trend exhibited by Brothers of Italy and its allies in a previous poll on August 9 published by Sky TG24 channel that gave the bloc 48.2 percent of the votes, 2.2 points more than in the previous measurement.

In this poll the leftist bloc was still down after losing five points compared to the previous month’s Sky TG24 poll, from 33 to 28 percent.

A resounding victory for Meloni’s bloc in the elections could unleash a wave of support in Parliament and the possibility of the alliance gaining a two-thirds majority, at which point the right could push for constitutional reform, as the leader of Brothers of Italy has already advanced.

Meloni has argued that this reform would aim to shore up a “fragile and unstable” political system, he explained to the British weekly ‘The Spectator’, marked by constant changes of government. In particular, Meloni has hinted at the possibility of increasing the powers of the Prime Minister or facilitating the direct election of the President of the Republic.