Italian Republican Party - Popular Support

Popular Support

Throughout the Kingdom of Italy the Republicans, along with the other party of the "far left", the Radicals, were strong especially among the rural workers in Romagna, in the Marche and around Rome. In the 1890s they suffered the competition with the Italian Socialist Party for the single-seat constituencies of Emilia-Romagna, where both parties had their heartlands. However, at the 1900 general election the PRI won 4.3% of the vote (7.3% in Lombardy, 9.6% in Emilia-Romagna, 15.0% in the Marche, 9.6% in Umbria and 7.2% in Apulia) and 29 seats from several regions of Italy, including also Veneto and Sicily, where they had some local strongholds. After that the Republicans were reduced almost to their power base in Romagna and Northern Marche, where the party had more than 40% and where most of their deputies came from. That was why the party, which was little more than a regional party, lost many seats when proportional representation was introduced in 1919.

At the 1946 general election, the first after World War II, despite competition by the Action Party, which had a similar constituency and regional base, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote, with peaks in its traditional strongholds: around 21% in Romagna (32.5% in Forlì and 37.3% in Ravenna), 16.4% in the Marche (26.6% in Ancona and 32.9% in Jesi), 11.0% in Umbria and 15.2% in Lazio. However the PRI soon lost its character of mass party in those areas, although it retained some of its positions there, as the Italian Communist Party conquered most of formerly Republican workers' votes, and the party settled around 1-2% at the national level in the 1950s and 1960s.

Since the 1970s, under the leadership of Giovanni Spadolini, they Republicans gained support among educated middle-class voters, losing some ground in their traditional strongholds but also increasing their share of vote somewhere else, notably in Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria, where they became a strong competitor to the Italian Liberal Party for a constituency composed of entrepreneurs and professionals. This resulted in a recovery of the party, which had its highest peak at the 1983 general election: after that Spadolini had been Prime Minister of Italy for barely two years, the party enjoyed a bounce which led it to the 5.1% of the vote. This time the PRI did fairly better in Piedmont (7.7%, 10.3% in Turin and 12.8% in Cuneo) and Lombardy (6.9%, 12.3% in Milan) that in Emilia-Romagna (5.1%) and the Marche (4.7%) on the whole. The party however did very well in its local strongholds such as the Province of Forlì-Cesena (11.3%) and the Province of Ravenna (13.9%).

At the 1992 general election, the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote (+0.7% from 1987) and increased its share of vote in the South. With the end of the First Republic the party was severely diminished in term of votes and retreated to its traditional strongholds and in the South. After that most Republicans from the Marche left the party to join the European Republicans Movement in 2001 and most Republicans from Campania switched to the Democratic Republicans, the PRI was left only with Romagna (where the local party is affiliated to the centre-left) and its new heartlands in Calabria and Sicily.

At the 2004 European Parliament election the party won 3.8% of the vote in Calabria, while it gained a surprising 9.4% in the provincial election of Messina in 2008. In Romagna, in alliance with the centre-left, the party won the 4.2% of the vote in the provincial election of Forlì-Cesena in 2004 and 3.8% in Ravenna in 2006 (6.1% in the municipal election). In 2011 local elections the party was almost stable in Ravenna and its province (3.1 and 5.1%, respectively) and in Reggio Calabria and its province (3.1 and 4.1%), but gained some ground in Naples (1.5%). In the 2012 municipal elections the party won 6.5% in Brindisi.