Friuli Venezia Giulia regional elections, turnout increases. We are moving towards the confirmation of Fedriga

Friuli Venezia Giulia goes against the trend compared to the last electoral challenges: voter turnout does not decrease and could even increase by a few percentage points. At 11pm yesterday, 35.95% of those entitled had voted, in line with 2013 (while comparisons with 2018 are not possible because five years ago there was only voting on Sundays). To get a complete picture, however, we will have to wait until 3 pm today, when the polling stations will close and the counting of the regional ones will begin.

The outcome of the match seems to have already been written: all insiders are betting on the confirmation of Massimiliano Fedriga, outgoing Northern League governor and centre-right candidate. Five years ago he took 57.09%. This time he could exceed the 60% ceiling. “Max is a champion, I’m afraid he’ll take away my record of 77%” said the “Doge” Luca Zaia a few days ago, joking but at the same time raising the bar quite a bit.

Fedriga’s fiercest challenger, Massimo Moretuzzo, an exponent of the center-left, autonomist, supported by Pd, M5S, Verdi and Sinistra as well as by the list of the Slovenian minority, by Pact for autonomy and by Open left Fvg, chases him from afar. Someone hopes for an Elly Schlein effect on the result of the dem (it is the first vote since the new secretary took office), but even the most optimistic hope that the psychological threshold of 20% will be surpassed by recovering a couple of points compared to the

percentages on which the party has been nailed for years.

On the other hand, Alessandro Maran of the Third Pole and Giorgia Tripoli, candidate of the No Vax-No Green Pass area, run for at most a few seats on the council, who in any case in Trieste and its surroundings during the months of the pandemic had a greater following than in other parts of Italy.

It will be more interesting to understand the internal balances of the center-right and the Northern League itself. Will the Brothers of Italy be able to confirm the excellent result of the policies, when with 31.36% it tripled the result of the League (still at 10.9%)? Or will the Northern League be able to recover part of the lost consensus (in the 2018 regionals it had 34.87%)?

Much will depend on Fedriga’s personal result, who, like his colleagues and party mates Luca Zaia in Veneto and Attilio Fontana in Lombardy, has also decided to present a list that refers directly to his surname. The former enfant prodige of the League (43 years old, two mandates to Montecitorio, one of which as group leader on his shoulders, before starting the regional adventure) has reiterated several times that the purpose of the Fedriga list is to attract votes from other areas politicians, choruses of people who appreciate his good governance but who would never put the cross on the symbol of a center-right party, but in reality it could drain the support of the League itself and its allies. Almost a remote derby between him and the federal secretary Matteo Salvini. And who knows what Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thinks, that on the electoral posters hung almost everywhere in Trieste she appears smiling right next to Fedriga. And that a few months ago you also tried to woo him by offering him a position in the government.