D Day is October 8th at lunchtime, when the final vote by secret ballot will take place in the Chamber on the electoral reform desired by the center-right and opposed by the opposition. A step now taken for granted by everyone, given that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has clearly warned that in the event of a rejection in the secrecy of the ballot box, early elections will immediately take place. It is no coincidence that the parties have been organizing themselves for some time to run with the new rules, which paint a very different picture compared to the recent past.
The main innovation of the Stabilicum or Melonellum, if you prefer, consists in the cancellation of the single-member constituencies envisaged by the Rosatellum and the introduction of a proportional system with a threshold of 3% and a majority bonus for the coalition that exceeds 42% of the votes. The prize is awarded not as a percentage, but as a fixed quota of 70 deputies and 35 senators up to a ceiling of 220 deputies, i.e. 55% of the seats, and 113 senators, 56.5%. These are percentages that more or less fall within the constitutional threshold of 55% which protects the election of the institutional guarantee bodies, i.e. the President of the Republic and the judges of the Constitutional Court and the CSM, and prevents the majority from changing the Constitution on its own.
It is clear that such a system leads to the polarization of political confrontation: on the one hand it favors the aggregation of similar forces into a coalition to reach the 42% threshold, on the other it encourages useful voting against extreme forces, as is the case of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni towards Roberto Vannacci's Futuro Nazionale party. From the series: “if you vote, the left wins”.
However, the risk remains that neither of the two coalitions reaches the fateful threshold of 42%: in this case the system transforms into pure proportional First Republic style, with the consequent difficulty in forming a government of broad agreement between opposing parties in the electoral campaign. Not a very remote risk, looking at the polls: with Vannacci's party at around 8%, the centre-right led by Meloni is already showing some results below the threshold and others slightly above it. As for the broad field, almost always given above, it must be considered that that of the coalition being formed between the Pd, M55, Italia Viva and Più Europa is an arithmetic sum and not a political one.
It is legitimate to predict that part of the M5S votes would be lost if the PD secretary Elly Schlein was leading the coalition and vice versa that a part of the PD voters would look towards the Calendian center if the MS5 leader Giuseppe Conte was instead leading the coalition. The failure to introduce a run-off if no one reaches 42%, initially foreseen by the Brothers of Italy and then abandoned due to the hostility of Forza Italia and the League, remains the main systemic flaw of the new electoral law.
