TheEconomistFebruary 1st 2020 431I
t is probablythe most famous of mod-
ern Italian political aphorisms. “Power
wears out those who do not have it,”
quipped the late Giulio Andreotti, a long-
serving prime minister. His words had a
special relevance this week for Matteo Sal-
vini, leader of the right-wing Northern
League, as he pondered the results of his
second big miscalculation in five months.
On January 26th the League’s candidate for
governor failed to conquer the region of
Emilia-Romagna in a vote that Mr Salvini
had touted as a referendum on whether he
should lead Italy.
Mr Salvini has only been out of power
since August last year. Until then he was
one of two deputy prime ministers in the
first cabinet of Giuseppe Conte, a techno-
crat; he wielded a decisive influence over
policy as head of the party that has led in
the polls since mid-2018. But then he torpe-
doed the coalition government in a bid to
force an election, hoping it would give him
an outright parliamentary majority anduntrammelled powers. His rivals respond-
ed by forming a new coalition without him.
His latest big miscalculation was to put
himself at the front of a campaign he
should have known would be harder to win
than it seemed. Emilia-Romagna, which
stretches from central into northern Italy,
has drifted rightwards in recent years. The
left lost there in the general election in 2018
and the European election in 2019. But it
has deep roots in a region the now-defunct
Italian Communist Party (pci) chose as ashowcase for its moderate “Euro-
communism”. The incumbent governor,
Stefano Bonaccini, who cut his political
teeth in the pci’s successor party, is widely
regarded as heading an effective adminis-
tration. A poll conducted last December
showed that two-thirds of voters in Emilia-
Romagna viewed it positively. And almost
twice as many expressed confidence in Mr
Bonaccini as in his League challenger. Mr
Salvini’s advisers presumably warned him
of similarly daunting findings.
Two other factors played a role in the
League’s emphatic defeat (its candidate
finished more than seven percentage
points behind Mr Bonaccini). The first
could not have been foreseen: the eruption
onto the scene of a new movement, the so-
called Sardines, a group of young, left-lean-
ing activists who set out to best Mr Salvini
at his own game of packing city squares
(hence their name). They succeeded re-
peatedly, doubtless convincing some vot-
ers who might otherwise have abstained to
cast their ballots for Mr Bonaccini and the
centre-left Democratic Party (pd). The
turnout shot up to 68%—30 points more
than at the previous regional election in- The Sardines’ role in bringing out the
left-wing vote earned them an “immense
thank you” from the pd’s national leader,
Nicola Zingaretti.
The second factor, if not foreseeable,
was certainly avoidable. In a region known
Italy’s regional electionsSalvini’s Sardine surprise
ROME
Another blunder by the populist leader of the Northern LeagueEurope
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