The election day which combined the constitutional referendum with 7 regional elections was not disruptive for the government coalition members, reducing the scope of short-term political risk."

Rome, Sept.21.– An electoral law reform is likely to add to an already challenging list of recovery fund-linked reforms.

Italians strongly in favour of trimming the number of MPs

The referendum question submitted to voters asked them whether they wanted to confirm the constitutional laws proposing the reduction of the total number of Italian MPs to 600 (from 945), which had already been passed by votes in both branches of the Italian parliament. Opinion polls published before the 15-day blackout period preceding the vote had anticipated the victory of the Yes vote (confirming the reduction) with a range of 65% to 70% of votes in favour.

The vote followed a dull campaign, in which most party leaders expressed a preference driven either by consistency with previous parliamentary votes (this is the case of Salvini, the leader of the League, and by Meloni, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia, which had supported the reduction in the parliamentary passages) or by government alliance concerns (the case of Zingaretti, the leader of the PD party, which had opposed the reform in the parliamentary passages and quietly supported it during the referendum campaign) rather than by strong conviction.