Unlike football matches, political matches are also played by changing the regulations. After the regional elections in Campania, Puglia and Veneto, a clear awareness has developed in the centre-right: the mixed system is no longer an advantage. And while at Palazzo Chigi we are thinking about playing the card of returning to pure proportional representation, it is worth explaining once and for all what distinguishes it from the single-member majority system and why a fairly compact coalition, especially in public, like that of Meloni, Salvini and Tajani, would have everything to gain from a change of direction.
The single-member majoritarian system is an electoral method. It means that the territory is divided into constituencies and in each constituency only one deputy or senator is elected (single member): whoever comes first wins the seat, even if it stops at 30 or 35% (this is the meaning of majority). The other votes are useless, they are good material at best for the pollsters. It is a simple and ruthless mechanism, because it forces the parties to unite behind a single candidate so as not to disperse votes and risk losing territories even where they have a real presence.
Pure proportional overturns this setting. Every vote is valid in the same way in every corner of the country and the seats are distributed with an arithmetic criterion: many preferences, many seats. Without prizes, without having to tear up constituencies by hitting candidates who are possibly in the media. It is a system that perfectly captures the real balance of power and, precisely for this reason, today it appeals to the centre-right.
Why? For a reason as prosaic as it is decisive: the conservative coalition is a compact bloc, cemented by years of common practice. It is not a last-minute alliance, nor a marriage of electoral interest. It is a machine that works and which, in a proportional system, sees votes transformed into seats with a linearity that no majoritarian system could guarantee. Furthermore, the minor allies – Forza Italia first and foremost – in such a system do not risk being crushed by the strongest party, as happens in single-member constituencies, where the real candidate is decided in advance by whoever leads the coalition.
The centre-left, on the contrary, is only strong when it manages to unite at the last minute. The so-called “wide field” can win decisive constituencies precisely thanks to the majoritarian logic: by adding together different votes, it takes home territories that it would otherwise lose. And it is precisely this effect that the center-right would like to neutralize. In the proportional system, winning in a symbolic constituency doesn’t matter, the total counts. And there the right has demonstrated, even in the latest regional elections, that it has a more homogeneous and widespread rooting. After proportional elections, the centre-left coalitions are often a train of varied wagons that sometimes cause the majority to fall: all it takes is one Turigliatto and the government collapses, as happened with the second Prodi government in 2007 by the senator of the Communist Refoundation, a self-professed “Trotskyist” adhering to the Fourth International who voted against a foreign policy resolution.
Then there is another element, more internal and less declared: a proportional system reduces the power of the leader who controls the candidatures in the constituencies. In a majority, the choice of the right name in a territory is as good as a program; in the proportional system the effective strength of the parties becomes central again, reducing internal tensions and jealousies.
Currently the electoral system of the elections (which will take place in 2027, if the legislature does not fall before) is based on the so-called “Rosatellum”, which provides for 25% of the seats to be single-member and the rest proportional. Meloni is seriously thinking about a reform that will make this 255 disappear to start stronger at the starting blocks, after the experience of the defeat in Campania and Puglia. Ultimately, the Center-Right is pushing for a return to pure proportional representation because it is a safer haven: it reduces risks, enhances the compactness of the coalition, gives a voice to allies and takes away from the Center-Left the leverage of single-member constituencies. It is a return to the past, of course, but dictated by a very clear reading of the future by Prime Minister Meloni: whoever governs today wants to arrive tomorrow with a few fewer unknowns and with a few more guarantees.
