The Italian Elections of 1948

Extract

The outcome of the Italian election's can be summarized statistically as follows. In the elections for the Chamber of Deputies (the only ones to be taken into account in these comments), a total of 26 million citizens went to the polls, or about 92% of the registered voters, as against 23 millions in 1946. Almost 13 millions cast their ballot for Christian-Democracy in 1948 as against 8 millions in 1946; about 10 millions for Marxist parties, as against 9 millions in 1946. All remaining parties and groups obtained about 3.5 million votes as against nearly double that number in 1946. These figures would seem to indicate that Christian-Democracy got about two-thirds of all first time voters, in addition to the support of those electors who refused to renew their confidence in the smaller parties. Marxism not only stood its ground but was able to add one million new supporters. The tendency, already so clear in 1946, towards the disintegration of smaller parties, became even more apparent in 1948; in certain regions of northern Italy they disappeared completely, and the south remained the only part of the country offering a last lingering haven to the groups which ruled Italy for the sixty years before the advent of fascism.