2022 Italian presidential election

The 2022 Italian presidential election was held in Rome between 24 and 29 January 2022. The president of Italy was elected by a joint assembly composed of the Italian Parliament and regional representatives. The election process extended over multiple days, culminating in incumbent president Sergio Mattarella being confirmed for a second term, with a total of 759 votes on the eighth ballot. This was the second most votes (after Sandro Pertini in 1978) ever received by a presidential candidate. Mattarella became the second president to be re-elected, his predecessor Giorgio Napolitano being the first.

Mattarella had initially ruled out a second term. On 29 January, he agreed to serve a second term, as most party leaders and Mario Draghi, the prime minister of Italy, asked him to accept their joint nomination for another term. Mattarella had previously already received significant and growing support in several rounds of voting, namely 125 votes on the third ballot, 166 votes on the fourth ballot, 336 votes on the sixth ballot, and 387 votes on the seventh ballot. Among Italian presidential elections, the 2022 election had the highest number of ballots since 1992, when Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was elected on the 16th ballot.

History

Political background (2015–2021)

The incumbent president Sergio Mattarella was elected in 2015 by the Italian Parliament and regional representatives. Mattarella was supported by the centre-left coalition, led by then-prime minister and secretary of the Democratic Party (PD) Matteo Renzi, and gained broad support. The result of the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum led to Renzi's resignation and to the formation of the Gentiloni Cabinet headed by Paolo Gentiloni, at the time a deputy from the PD and the incumbent Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, as the prime minister.

The 2018 general election resulted in a hung parliament. As a result of the ensuing government formation talks, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the League (Lega) formed a new cabinet led Giuseppe Conte, a law professor close to the M5S. During the government formation, Mattarella's role became particularly important when he refused to appoint the Eurosceptic economist Paolo Savona as minister of finance.

In August 2019, Lega's leader Matteo Salvini announced a motion of no confidence against Conte after growing tensions within the majority. Many political analysts believed that the no confidence motion was an attempt to force early elections and to improve Lega's standing in the parliament, so that Salvini could become the next prime minister. On 21 August, Mattarella started the consultations with all the parliamentary groups. On the same day, the national direction of the PD officially opened to form a new cabinet in a coalition with the M5S. On 29 August, Mattarella summoned Conte to the Quirinal Palace to give him the task of forming the new cabinet.

In 2020, Italy became one of the countries worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Conte's government was the first in the Western world to implement a national pandemic lockdown to stop the spread of the disease. Despite being widely approved by public opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Italy was also described as the largest suppression of constitutional rights in the history of the Italian Republic. Mattarella described the COVID-19 crisis as "three emergencies on the health, social and economic fronts" that needed a stable government and made sure a new government could be formed after the Conte II Cabinet fell, amid high popularity, with the possibility of a second term.

In January 2021, Renzi's Italia Viva (IV), a member of the coalition supporting Conte's cabinet, withdrew its support for the government. Although Conte won confidence votes in the parliament in the subsequent days, he chose to resign, having failed to reach an absolute majority in the Senate of the Republic. After negotiations to form a third Conte cabinet failed, President Mattarella appointed Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, as the prime minister at the head of a national unity government composed of independent technocrats and politicians from M5S, Lega, PD, IV, Forza Italia (FI), and Free and Equal (LeU).

Race for the presidency (2021–2022)

During 2021, President Mattarella expressed his unavailability regarding a second term, which had been proposed by various political forces, recalling similar remarks made by his predecessors Antonio Segni and Giovanni Leone. Other political figures stated that they did not intend to run as president, among them Romano Prodi, Emma Bonino, and Liliana Segre.

During a press conference in Rome on 22 December 2021, Prime Minister Draghi, questioned on the hypothesis of his rise to the Quirinal Palace, declared that he was "a grandfather in the service of institutions". The declaration was interpreted as a confirmation of his willingness to be elected president and accelerated the debate around the consequences of a possible election to the presidency of the incumbent prime minister, something that had never happened before. Several national and foreign observers considered Draghi to be a probable candidate for the presidency, among them the ''Corriere della Sera'', ''The Economist'', ''Le Figaro'', the ''Financial Times'', ''Le Monde'', the ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'', and ''The New York Times''.

On 14 January 2022, the leaders of the centre-right coalition expressed their willingness to nominate former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as their candidate to the presidency. Berlusconi's candidacy was widely criticised by PD, M5S, and other centrist and leftist parties. PD secretary Enrico Letta described it as "divisive", stating that Italy needed a unitary president and not a long-time party leader like Berlusconi. On 22 January, after acknowledging not to have enough votes to be elected, Berlusconi announced the withdrawal of his candidacy.

On 16 January, forty parliamentarians in opposition to the Draghi government and belonging to the Mixed Group factions of Alternativa, Communist Party (PC), and Power to the People (PaP), supported the candidacy of the former vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Italy Paolo Maddalena, subsequently obtaining the support of Italexit, Italy of Values (IdV), and the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), the latter of which was not represented in the assembly. Before the start of the voting process, PaP withdrew its support for Maddalena due to his positions against abortion and same-sex marriage. A similar choice was also expressed within the Mixed Group by Green Italia's parliamentary group FacciamoEco, which decided to vote for Marco Cappato, an activist and member of the Italian Radicals.

Various hypothetical candidacies were proposed by media, journalists and political analysts in the days before the election. The list notably included Elisabetta Casellati, who is serving as the president of the Senate, former president of the Senate Marcello Pera like Pier Ferdinando Casini and Luciano Violante, the European Commissioner and former prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, the judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy and former prime minister Giuliano Amato, former ministers like Franco Frattini, Giulio Tremonti, Andrea Riccardi, Rosy Bindi, and Paola Severino, the judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy Silvana Sciarra, and the diplomat Elisabetta Belloni. David Sassoli, President of the European Parliament, was also a potential candidate for the PD until his death on 11 January 2022.

On 24 January, the day of the first ballot, in the absence of a common candidate, both centre-right and centre-left coalitions requested the blank vote. On the other hand, the candidacies of Maddalena and Cappato were voted by minor parties and parliamentary groups, while Action and More Europe confirmed their support to the Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia. On the same day, Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy (FdI), proposed former deputy attorney of Venice Carlo Nordio. Nordio rejected the candidacy, citing lack of political experience.

On 25 January, the leaders of the centre-right coalition organized a press conference to announce a list of presidential candidates. The candidates were Marcello Pera

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