Mediaboss Marketing

Leader of Italy's far-right League party Matteo Salvini addresses a news conference with centre-right senator and regional candidate Lucia Borgonzoni, in Bologna, a day after a regional vote in Emilia-Romagna.

MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images

Matteo Salvinis determined campaign to win a key regional election in Italy ended in failure, a significant blow to his plans to topple the fragile Italian government and install himself as the far-right, anti-migrant prime minister of the European Unions third-largest economy.

The polls had suggested an exceedingly tight race in Emilia-Romagna between Mr. Salvinis populist League party and the centre-left Democratic Party. The wealthy north-central region, which is home to Ferrari, Lamborghini and Parmesan cheese, has been a left-wing, and sometimes communist, bastion since the late 1940s.

A League victory would no doubt have accelerated the demise of the national coalition government that was formed last summer between the Democrats and the 5-Star Movement (M5S) after Mr. Salvini, who was deputy prime minister and interior minister, pulled the plug on its coalition with M5S.

Story continues below advertisement

Italy's right-wing leader Matteo Salvini failed in his effort to overturn decades of leftist rule in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna on Sunday in an election that he hoped would bring down the current national government. Reuters

But Mr. Salvinis gambit to finish off the coalition by destroying the Democrats stronghold in Emilia-Romagna was met with fierce resistance by the Sardines, the youth-led movement who packed the squares of Bologna, Parma and other cities in the region with tens of thousands of anti-League protestors, some of whom called him a neo-fascist. The high youth turnout at the polls was instrumental in swinging momentum away from the League.

Nicola Zingaretti, the Democrats leader, gave his immense thanks to the Sardines for their anti-Salvini rallies.

The early results gave the Democrat-led list headed by Stefano Bonaccini, who has been Emilia-Romagnas president (effectively governor) since 2014, more than 51 per cent of the vote. The League candidate, Lucia Borgonzoni, and her allies, which included Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia party, took just under 44 per cent of the vote. Voters delivered a crushing defeat to M5S, the anti-establishment party which had placed first in the last national elections, in 2018; it landed at a mere 3.5 per cent, reflecting its crumbling support throughout Italy.

Mr. Salvini worked hard in Emilia-Romagna in recent weeks, making as many as a dozen appearances a day in a whirlwind campaign. On Saturday, he was so confident of victory that he used a tweet about the eviction notice he intended to deliver to Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

In effect, Mr. Salvini turned the election into a referendum on his own popularity, political analysts said. Salvini became the victim of his own hype, turning a strong result on enemy territory into a crushing defeat for himself and his party, said Francesco Galietti, chief executive of Policy Sonar, a Rome geopolitical consultancy.

His campaign in Emilia-Romagna reinforced his status as Italys anti-migrant champion, a strategy that has won him millions of supporters among Italians who are convinced that Italy took an unfair burden of the European migrant crisis and that migrants are taking their jobs. A video showing Mr. Salvini buzzing the intercom on the door of Tunisian migrants in Bologna to ask them if they were drug dealers triggered a diplomatic row with the Tunisian ambassador.

In spite of the Leagues loss in Emilia-Romagna, the party remains a potent and rising force, even in Emilia-Romagna, where it won only 5 per cent of vote in the 2014 election. In Italys other regional election on Sunday, in Calabria, in the deep south, a centre-right coalition backed by the League handily defeated the Democrats. Nationally, the League still tops the polls and would probably win a snap-election.

Story continues below advertisement

But Mr. Conte, the Prime Minister, has vowed to keep the Democrat-M5S coalition intact. Whether he will be able to do so as support for M5S vanishes is an open question. The party, which was launched in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo, thrived in opposition but has had trouble making the transition to government. Sensing that MS5 is near collapse, Luigi di Maio resigned as party leader last week, though he remains as Foreign Minister.

Investors cheered the Democrats victory in Emilia-Romagna. They had feared that a victory by the euro-skeptic League would have triggered national elections and heightened tensions between Brussels and Rome. In early European trading, Italian benchmark bonds rallied, with the yield on 10-year debt falling 0.16 per cent to 1.07 per cent (yields move inversely to prices).

Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the days most important headlines. Sign up today.

More:
Regional election in Italy delivers blow to populist leader Salvini - The Globe and Mail