1919 Italian general election

none Kingdom of Italy legislative 1913 Italian general election 1913 1921 Italian general election 1921 All 508 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 255 130x130px 16 November 1919 Nicola Bombacci 3 (cropped).jpg Nicola Bombacci Italian Socialist Party 156 104 1,834,792 32.28% Don Luigi Sturzo 1919.jpg Luigi Sturzo Italian People's Party (1919) 100 New 1,167,354 20.53% 90px No leader Liberals, Democrats and Radicals 91 New 904,195 15.91% Italian 1919 elections Chamber of Deputies constituencies.svg Prime Minister Elected Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti Francesco Saverio Nitti Italian Radical Party Italian Radical Party 56.58% General elections were held in Italy on 16 November 1919.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1047 978-3-8329-5609-7 The fragmented Liberal governing coalition lost the absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, due to the success of the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian People's Party. A new election law had expanded the voting rights to a larger section of the population and established a proportional representation system.Palombara Joseph G. La 1953 The Italian Elections and the Problem of Representation https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/italian-elections-and-the-problem-of-representation/75E94DF44C81232839CBB3DCEB9D1B24 American Political Science Review en 47 3 676–703 10.2307/1952900 1952900 1537-5943 subscription Background The elections took place in the middle of Biennio Rosso ("Red Biennium") a two-year period, between 1919 and 1920, of intense social conflict in Italy, following the First World War.Brunella Dalla Casa, Composizione di classe, rivendicazioni e professionalità nelle lotte del "biennio rosso" a Bologna, in: AA. VV, Bologna 1920; le origini del fascismo, a cura di Luciano Casali, Cappelli, Bologna 1982, p. 179. The revolutionary period was followed by the violent reaction of the Fascist blackshirts militia and eventually by the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini in 1922. The Biennio Rosso took place in a context of economic crisis at the end of the war, with high unemployment and political instability. It was characterized by mass strikes, worker manifestations as well as self-management experiments through land and factories occupations. In Turin and Milan, workers councils were formed and many factory occupations took place under the leadership of anarcho-syndicalists. The agitations also extended to the agricultural areas of the Padan plain and were accompanied by peasant strikes, rural unrests and guerrilla conflicts between left-wing and right-wing militias. Electoral system The Italian parliament passed a law on August 15, 1919 that replaced the uninominal-majoritarian system with a proportional representation system that apportioned seats based on the D'Hondt method. The new electoral law introduced in 1919 increased the electorate by more than a quarter to 11 million. It gave all those who had fought at the front in the First World War the right to vote, regardless of their age, as well as all other men over the age of 21.Duggan, Fascist Voices, p. 30 The old system of using single-member constituencies with two-round majority voting was abolished and replaced with proportional representation in 58 constituencies with between 5 and 20 members.Nohlen & Stöver, p1032 The new system favoured parties such as the socialist PSI, which was able to mobilise voters through trade unions, cooperatives and other mass organisations, and the Catholic PPI, which could rely on the support of church associations. Parties and leaders PartyIdeologyLeaderSeats in 1913Liberal Party (PL)LiberalismGiovanni Giolitti270Italian Radical Party (PR)RadicalismFrancesco Saverio Nitti62Italian Socialist Party (PSI)SocialismNicola Bombacci52Italian People's Party (PPI)Christian democracyLuigi Sturzo29Italian Reformist Socialist Party (PSRI)Social democracyLeonida Bissolati19Italian Republican Party (PRI)RepublicanismSalvatore Barzilai8Democratic Party (PD)Social liberalismNo leaderDid not existLiberals, Democrats and Radicals (LDR)LiberalismNo leaderDid not existCombatants' Party (PdC)Veterans' interestsNo leaderDid not existEconomic Party (PE)ConservatismFerdinando BoccaDid not exist Results The fragmented Liberal governing coalition lost the absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, due to the success of the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian People's Party. The Socialists of Nicola Bombacci received the most votes in almost every region and especially in Emilia-Romagna (60.0%), Piedmont (49.7%), Lombardy (45.9%), Tuscany (41.7%) and Umbria (46.5%), while the People's Party were the largest party in Veneto (42.6%) and came second in Lombardy (30.1%) and the Liberal lists were stronger in Southern Italy (over 50% in Abruzzo, Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily).Piergiorgio Corbetta; Maria Serena Piretti, Atlante storico-elettorale d'Italia, Zanichelli, Bologna 2009 File:Italian Parliament, 1919.svg Italian Socialist Party 1834792 156 +104 Italian People's Party 1167354 100 New Liberals, Democrats and Radicals 904195 96 New Democratic Party 622310 60 New Social Democracy (Italy, 1922) Liberal Party 490384 41 −229 Combatants' Party 232923 20 New Italian Radical Party 110697 12 −50 Economic Party 87450 7 New Italian Reformist Socialist Party 82157 6 −13 Radicals, Republicans, Socialists and Combatants 65421 5 New #ABCE87 Italian Republican Party 53197 4 −4 Independent Socialists 33938 1 −7 #CE234A 108674 0 10239326 National Institute of Statistics Popular vote #ddd 550px 500px PSI Italian Socialist Party 32.28 PPI Italian People's Party (1919) 20.53 LDR Liberals, Democrats and Radicals 15.91 PD Democratic Party Social Democracy (Italy, 1922) 10.95 PL Liberals (Italy) 8.63 PdC #8B4513 4.10 PR Italian Radical Party 1.95 PE #476DFF 1.54 PSRI Italian Reformist Socialist Party 1.45 RRSC Radicals, Republicans, Socialists and Combatants #ABCE87 1.15 PRI Italian Republican Party 0.94 SI Independent Socialists #CE234A 0.60 Seats #ddd 550px 500px PSI Italian Socialist Party 30.71 PPI Italian People's Party (1919) 19.69 LDR Liberals, Democrats and Radicals 18.90 PD Democratic Party Social Democracy (Italy, 1922) 11.81 PL Liberal Union (Italy) 8.07 PdC #8B4513 3.94 PR Italian Radical Party 2.36 PE #476DFF 1.38 PSRI Italian Reformist Socialist Party 1.18 RRSC Radicals, Republicans, Socialists and Combatants #ABCE87 0.98 PRI Italian Republican Party 0.79 SI Independent Socialists #CE234A 0.20 Leading parties by region Region First party Second party Third party Abruzzo-Molise LDR–PL PSI PPI Apulia LDR–PL PSI PPI Basilicata LDR–PL PSI PPI Calabria LDR–PL PPI PSI Campania LDR–PL PPI PSI Emilia-Romagna PSI LDR–PL PPI Lazio LDR–PL PPI PSI Liguria LDR–PL PSI PPI Lombardy PSI PPI LDR–PL Marche PSI LDR–PL PPI Piedmont PSI LDR–PL PPI Sardinia LDR–PL PPI PSI Sicily LDR–PL PPI PSI Tuscany PSI LDR–PL PPI Umbria PSI LDR–PL PPI Veneto PPI PSI LDR–PL References Sources Duggan, Christopher (2013). Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy, New York, NY: Oxford University Press 978-0-19-973078-0 General Category:General elections in Italy Category:Luigi Sturzo Italy