Italy rejects constitutional reform: Detailed results of the referendum |
Italy rejects constitutional reform: Detailed results of the referendum
Those who fantasized that a high turnout would produce a result mirroring the last general election were completely mistaken.
The constitutional reform proposed by the right to place the judiciary under government control has been rejected by Italians. The “No” vote won with 53.7 percent of the ballots. The “Yes” vote stalled at 46.3 percent, trailing by more than seven percentage points and coming up nearly two million votes short.
Specifically, there were 14,461,074 votes for “No” (excluding two polling stations whose results were still missing as of 9:30 p.m. on Monday). This is a significant figure: the center-left had not reached a similar number of votes since 2008 under former leader Walter Veltroni. Predictions that forecasted a neck-and-neck race were also proven wrong. The “No” vote's victory was decisive despite a reckless electoral campaign featuring forays into crime news – such as the Garlasco murder case and the so-called “family in the woods” invited to the Senate by Senate President Ignazio La Russa – and the usual exploitation of the migration issue. This came even despite Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's media blitz, which included a guest appearance on rapper Fedez and Mr. Marra's podcast trying to win over the youth vote.
The vote, which was not supposed to be politicized, instead turned into the majority coalition's first defeat. This was further confirmed by an unexpectedly high turnout that neared 60 percent: the second-highest........