Italian Election Pollster: Left Likely Cannot Bridge Gap with Right-Populist Coalition

An Italian pollster says trends indicate that the left-wing parties will not be able to bridge the gap with the centre-right coalition, which is polling around 20 points ahead.

Lorenzo Pregliasco of the firm Youtrend has claimed that the large gap between the right-populist coalition, which includes firebrand social conservative Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, populist Matteo Salvini’s League, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, and the left-wing parties is not likely to reverse before next month’s national election.

Pregliasco spoke of the uninominal seats, i.e. those in which a candidate is directly elected in a single-member district, rather than from a list of candidates, saying: “The gap between the two coalitions is felt very much then in the uninominal [seats] and therefore the centre-right could have an easy game,” Il Giornale reports.

According to the pollster, Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy (FdI) leads in many national polls, holds “the cards in her hand and in these cases the only risk is to get the game wrong.”

So far during the snap election campaign, Ms Meloni has kept a relatively low profile, a strategy that seems to have borne fruit in recent polls, such as a note poll released on the 20th of August that puts her FdI party 4.5 per cent ahead of the left-wing Democratic Party (PD).

Overseas, however, Meloni made headlines recently after publishing a video on social media allegedly showing a Ukrainian woman being raped by an African migrant in broad daylight, with the Twitter post later being removed by the social media platform.

Meloni has also been associated with fascism by English-language media and described as “post-fascist” — a connection she rejected during an interview with The Spectator magazine published earlier this month.

“When we founded Brothers of Italy, we founded it as the centre-right, with its head held high. When I am something, I declare it. I never hide. If I were fascist, I would say that I am fascist. Instead, I have never spoken of fascism because I am not fascist,” she told the magazine.

Meloni is, however, socially conservative, and has spoken out on issues like abortion, which she has previously labelled and described as a “defeat” — she but has not promised to change Italian abortion laws.

Both of her coalition allies, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, have opened the way for Meloni to be Italy’s next prime minister — which wouldd make her the first female prime minister in the country’s history.

Some forecasts predict the right-populist coalition could win as many as 60 per cent of the seats in parliament next month.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.