Meloni suffers blow at polls after party loses Sardinia to the Left

GIORGIA MELONI suffered her first significant political blow since being elected Italy’s prime minister 18 months ago after her party lost a regional election in Sardinia.

The centre-left claimed victory in the election on the island, with their candidate, Alessandra Todde, clinching 45.4 per cent of votes, narrowly beating the centre-right candidate, Paolo Truzzu, who took 45 per cent of the vote. Ms Meloni had thrown her weight behind Mr Truzzu, a member of her Right-wing Brothers of Italy party and mayor of Cagliari, Sardinia’s capital.

Federico Santi of the Eurasia Group said: “The somewhat unexpected defeat is the first major electoral setback for Meloni since taking office in 2022 and proves that a more united opposition can take on the government, despite Meloni’s enduring popularity.”

The League, another party in the government coalition, performed particularly poorly, said Mr Santi. “If this trend continues, it would undermine Meloni’s standing domestically and lead to more tensions within the coalition government.” Francesco Galietti, of the think tank Policy Sonar, said Ms Meloni made an error in pushing an unpopular candidate.

“Truzzu was one of Italy’s least beloved mayors,” he said. “And yet she pushed ahead. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that Sardinia has shattered the myth of Meloni’s political invincibility.”

The vote was the first of five regional elections in Italy this year. The Meloni government will also face a test in June’s European Parliament elections.

Ms Todde, the winning candidate, will become Sardinia’s first female governor. She is a member of the populist Five Star Movement, which allied with the centre-left Democratic Party for the election. Elly Schlein, who leads the Democratic Party, said: “Today we’ve shown that the Right can be beaten.”

Giuseppe Conte, the former prime minister who leads the Five Star Movement, said: “Sardinian citizens have closed the door on Meloni and company and opened it to the alternative. The air has changed.”

The election result was hailed by Corriere della Sera, a leading daily, as “a blow to the centre-right” while another paper, La Stampa, said it was “a slap to the government”. The victory marks the first time that the centre-left has been able to take back a region since 2015.

At the national level, however, the coalition government is still relatively popular and Ms Meloni has vowed to remain in power for a full fiveyear term.