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1948 Italian general election
General elections were held in Italy on 18 April 1948 to elect the first Parliament of the Italian Republic. After the Soviet-backed 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état on 21–25 February, the United States became alarmed about Soviet intentions in Central Europe and feared that Italy would be drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence if the left-wing Popular Democratic Front (FDP), which consisted of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), were to win the 1948 general election. As the last month of the election campaign began, Time published an article arguing that an FDP victory would push Italy to "the brink of catastrophe".
The U.S. consequently intervened in the election by heavily funding the centrist coalition led by Christian Democracy (DC) and launching an anti-communist propaganda campaign in Italy. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) claims that the Soviet Union responded by sending exorbitant funds to the FDP coalition; however, the PCI disputed this claim and expressed its discontent with what it perceived as a lack of support from the Soviets.
The DC won the election by a comfortable margin and defeated the FDP coalition. The DC went on to form a government without the leftists, who had been expelled from the government coalition in the May 1947 crises and remained frozen out, and became the de facto ruling party of the First Italian Republic. It represented the start of the Italian party system of centrism that lasted until the 1960s when the PSI was allowed to join the government as part of the organic centre-left system.
The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly was adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota.
For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used: Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected. This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.
The election remain unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi, the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history". The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society: on the right it was a Roman Catholic, conservative, and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing DC of Alcide De Gasperi, and on the left was a secular, revolutionary, and socialist society, linked to the Soviet Union and represented by the FDP coalition led by the PCI.
The DC ran a campaign that pointed to the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. It warned that in Communist countries "children send parents to jail", "children are owned by the state", and told voters that disaster would strike Italy if the Communists were to take power. Another slogan was "In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you – Stalin doesn't."
The FDP campaign focused on living standards and avoided embarrassing questions of foreign policy, such as United Nations membership (vetoed by the Soviet Union) and Communist Yugoslavia control of Trieste, or losing American financial and food aid through the Marshall Plan. The PCI led the FDP coalition and had effectively marginalised the PSI, which suffered loss in terms of parliamentary seats and political power. The PSI had also been hurt by the secession of a social-democratic faction led by Giuseppe Saragat, which contested the election with the concurrent list of Socialist Unity (US).
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1948 Italian general election
General elections were held in Italy on 18 April 1948 to elect the first Parliament of the Italian Republic. After the Soviet-backed 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état on 21–25 February, the United States became alarmed about Soviet intentions in Central Europe and feared that Italy would be drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence if the left-wing Popular Democratic Front (FDP), which consisted of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), were to win the 1948 general election. As the last month of the election campaign began, Time published an article arguing that an FDP victory would push Italy to "the brink of catastrophe".
The U.S. consequently intervened in the election by heavily funding the centrist coalition led by Christian Democracy (DC) and launching an anti-communist propaganda campaign in Italy. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) claims that the Soviet Union responded by sending exorbitant funds to the FDP coalition; however, the PCI disputed this claim and expressed its discontent with what it perceived as a lack of support from the Soviets.
The DC won the election by a comfortable margin and defeated the FDP coalition. The DC went on to form a government without the leftists, who had been expelled from the government coalition in the May 1947 crises and remained frozen out, and became the de facto ruling party of the First Italian Republic. It represented the start of the Italian party system of centrism that lasted until the 1960s when the PSI was allowed to join the government as part of the organic centre-left system.
The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly was adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota.
For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used: Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected. This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.
The election remain unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi, the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history". The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society: on the right it was a Roman Catholic, conservative, and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing DC of Alcide De Gasperi, and on the left was a secular, revolutionary, and socialist society, linked to the Soviet Union and represented by the FDP coalition led by the PCI.
The DC ran a campaign that pointed to the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. It warned that in Communist countries "children send parents to jail", "children are owned by the state", and told voters that disaster would strike Italy if the Communists were to take power. Another slogan was "In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you – Stalin doesn't."
The FDP campaign focused on living standards and avoided embarrassing questions of foreign policy, such as United Nations membership (vetoed by the Soviet Union) and Communist Yugoslavia control of Trieste, or losing American financial and food aid through the Marshall Plan. The PCI led the FDP coalition and had effectively marginalised the PSI, which suffered loss in terms of parliamentary seats and political power. The PSI had also been hurt by the secession of a social-democratic faction led by Giuseppe Saragat, which contested the election with the concurrent list of Socialist Unity (US).