1993 Milan municipal election

1993 Milan municipal election

←  1990 6 June 1993 (first round) 20 June 1993 (second round) 1997  →
Turnout	78.1% 6.7 pp (first round) 69.3% 8.8 pp (second round)
Mayoral election
Candidate Marco Formentini Nando Dalla Chiesa Party Northern League The Network Alliance — Progressives 1st Round vote 346,425 270,554 Percentage 38.8% 30.4% 2nd Round vote 452,732 340,708 Percentage 57.1% 42.9%
Mayor before election Claudio Gelati (Special commissioner) Elected Mayor Marco Formentini LN
City Council election
All 60 seats in City Council 31 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader % Seats +/– Northern League Marco Formentini 40.86 36 +25 Progressives Nando Dalla Chiesa 28.25 13 Centrist coalition Piero Bassetti 10.79 5 −13 Pact with Milan Adriano Teso 6.89 3 Socialists and Reformists Giampiero Borghini 5.35 2 −14 Social Movement Riccardo De Corato 3.35 1 −2 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

Municipal elections were held in Milan on 6 and 20 June 1993 to elect the Mayor of Milan and the 60 members of the City Council.

For the first time under a new local electoral law, enacted on 25 March 1993, citizens could vote to directly elect the Mayor. ^[1]

As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held between the top two candidates – Marco Formentini, a former socialist partisan and lawyer at that time member of the newborn regionalist Northern League (LN) and Nando Dalla Chiesa, son of general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and member of the newborn christian-leftist The Network (LR) – which Formentini won by a decisive margin. ^[2]

Background

After gaining 11 seats in the City Council in 1990 election, for the first time the newborn regionalist Northern League (LN) presented its own mayoral candidate: the partisan and lawyer Marco Formentini. Formentini was a former socialist, politically a left-wing, and for this reason he was considered a strong candidate in a city like Milan, historically close to leftist ideas but at the same time attracted by the new proposals of the Northern League party. ^[2] The resentment against Rome's centralism (with the famous slogan Roma ladrona, which loosely means "Rome big thief") and the Italian government, common in northern Italy as many northerners felt that the government wasted resources collected mostly from northerners' taxes, was very strong ^[3] and resentment against illegal immigrants was widespread. Finally, the Tangentopoli corruption scandals, which started right in Milan and invested most of the established parties, were unveiled from 1992 on and broke the traditional link between the city and the powerful milanese Socialist Party. A Northern League candidate in Milan was not considered a conservative also because the lombard wing and, more broadly, the bulk of the original Lombard League has tended to be the left-wing of the party. More of the members of the Lombard League hailed from the far-left of the political spectrum, having been active in the Italian Communist Party, the Party of Proletarian Unity, Proletarian Democracy and the Greens, ^{[4] [5]} and conceived Northern League as a centre-left (and, to some extent, social-democratic) political force. ^{[6] [7]}

The main opposition to Formentini was represented by Nando Dalla Chiesa, son of the general Carlo Alberto, killed by the Mafia in 1982. Dalla Chiesa was supported by the left-wing coalition of the Progressives, an alliance composed by the former communist Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and some other progressives party (such as the new-born Federation of the Greens and Communist Refoundation Party).

Campaign

The electoral campaign was characterized by a strongly polarized debate, with Dalla Chiesa repeatedly warning that if Formentini would have won the city would have experienced a "new regime, more arrogant than during the craxism and a violent one, not just with words". ^[8] Meanwhile the Northern League leader Umberto Bossi defined Dalla Chiesa "ignorant" and offensively renamed him "Nando Cosa Nostra ". ^[8] In his attempt to gain support from voters disappointed by the Tangentopoli scandal, on the eve of the election Bossi said that Dalla Chiesa was a member of those "elite clubs which pretended to defend the people but were just part of an ancient regime totally disinterested in the needs of the people". ^[8]

Voting system

The new semipresidential voting system was used for all mayoral elections in Italy of cities with a population higher than 15,000 for the first time. Under this system voters express a direct choice for the Mayor or an indirect choice voting for the party of the candidate's coalition. If no candidate receives at least 50% of votes, the top two candidates go to a second round after two weeks. This gives a result whereby the winning candidate may be able to claim majority support.

The election of the City Council is based on a direct choice for the candidate with a preference vote: the candidate with the majority of the preferences is elected. The number of the seats for each losing party is determined proportionally.

Parties and candidates

This is a list of the major parties (and their respective leaders) which participated in the election.

Political party or alliance		Constituent lists		Candidate
	Progressives		Democratic Party of the Left	Nando Dalla Chiesa
			Communist Refoundation Party
			The Network
			Federation of the Greens
	Socialists and Reformists			Giampiero Borghini
	Segni Pact			Adriano Teso
	Centrist coalition		Christian Democracy	Piero Bassetti
			Italian Democratic Socialist Party
	Northern League			Marco Formentini
	Italian Social Movement			Riccardo De Corato

Results

Although Dalla Chiesa was seen as a man outside the old corrupted parties, Formentini managed to win the support of the moderate and centrist voters of the agonizing Christian Democracy (DC) party.

On 20 June 1993 Formentini heavily won the election and became the first directly elected mayor of Milan, the first one from a non-socialist party since 1945.

The future secretary of the Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, was firstly elected municipal councillor, aged 20.

Summary of the 1993 Milan City Council and Mayoral election results

Candidates		1st round		2nd round		Leader's seat	Parties		Votes	%	Seats
		Votes	%	Votes	%
	Marco Formentini	346,537	38.82	452,868	57.08	–		Northern League	307,122	40.86	36
	Nando dalla Chiesa	271,294	30.39	340,553	42.92	Y		Communist Refoundation Party	85,349	11.36	6
								Democratic Party of the Left	66,250	8.81	4
								The Network	26,884	3.58	1
								Federation of the Greens	23,150	3.08	1
								List for Milan	10,683	1.42	–
								Total	212,316	28.25	12
	Piero Bassetti	97,095	10.88	–	–	Y		Christian Democracy	70,881	9.43	4
								With Women to Rebuild Milan	5,145	0.68	–
								Italian Socialist Democratic Party	2,790	0.37	–
								Federalism	2,311	0.31	–
								Total	81,127	10.79	4
	Adriano Teso	60,121	6.74	–	–	Y		Pact with Milan	51,763	6.89	2
	Giampiero Borghini	54,856	6.15	–	–	Y		Trust in Milan	28,044	3.73	1
								Socialists and Reformists for Milan	12,185	1.62	–
								Total	40,229	5.35	1
	Riccardo De Corato	25,899	2.90	–	–	Y		Italian Social Movement	25,205	3.35	–
	Pier Gianni Prosperini	10,012	1.12	–	–	–		Lombard Alpine League	8,677	1.15	–
	Angela Bossi	8,157	0.91	–	–	–		Lombard Alliance Autonomy	7,855	1.05	–
	Tiziana Maiolo	7,485	0.84	–	–	–		Justice Ecology Freedom	6,214	0.83	–
	Arman Armand	4,586	0.51	–	–	–		Pensioners' League	4,536	0.60	–
	Claudio Stroppa	3,926	0.44	–	–	–		Stroppa List	3,845	0.51	–
	Carlo Fatuzzo	2,616	0.29	–	–	–		Pensioners' Party	2,719	0.36	–
Total		892,584	100.00	793,421	100.00	5			751,608	100.00	55
Eligible voters		1,195,257	100.00	1,195,257	100.00
Did not vote		261,197	21.85	367,317	30.73
Voted		934,060	78.15	827,940	69.27
Blank or invalid ballots		54,718	1.7	51,484	1.6
Total valid votes		879,342	98.3	776,456	98.4
Source: Ministry of the Interior

Popular vote LN   40.9% PRC   11.4% DC   9.4% PDS   8.8% PS   6.9% S&R   5.3% LR   3.6% MSI   3.3% FdV   3.1%

Council Seats LN   60.0% PRC   10.0% DC   8.3% PDS   8.3% PS   5.0% S&R   3.3% LR   1.7% MSI   1.7% FdV   1.7%

Popular vote (coalition) LN   40.9% Progressives   28.2% Centre   10.8% Others   15.4%

Council seats (coalition) LN   60.0% Progressives   21.7% Centre   8.3% Others   10.0%

Results by zona

Mayoral votes

Second round

Table below shows the results of the votes for mayoral candidates on the second round (20 June 1993) in each zona: ^[9]

Zona Marco Formentini Nando Dalla Chiesa Turnout 1 30,706 (64.6%) 16,808 (35.4%) 64.4% 2 24,953 (59.3%) 17,161 (40.7%) 69.0% 3 18,454 (61.4%) 11,587 (38.6%) 66.7% 4 23,708 (58.9%) 16,573 (41.1%) 67.8% 5 20,493 (56.9%) 15,527 (43.1%) 68.4% 6 39,426 (63.9%) 22,309 (36.1%) 69.6% 7 9,943 (54.5%) 8,302 (45.5%) 70.0% 8 15,341 (54.9%) 12,602 (45.1%) 70.4% 9 15,435 (52.0%) 14,234 (48.0%) 71.5% 10 29,741 (54.1%) 25,243 (45.9%) 69.2%

Zona Marco Formentini Nando Dalla Chiesa Turnout 11 36,194 (61.1%) 23,080 (38.9%) 69.0% 12 10,103 (56.2%) 7,884 (43.8%) 71.9% 13 8,325 (54.1%) 7,068 (45.9%) 70.2% 14 24,670 (56.8%) 18,763 (43.2%) 70.5% 15 16,892 (52.3%) 15,384 (47.7%) 71.0% 16 17,300 (51.4%) 16,387 (48.6%) 72.3% 17 27,724 (58.0%) 20,076 (42.0%) 68.6% 18 26,061 (50.6%) 25,440 (49.4%) 70.7% 19 32,047 (55.8%) 25,436 (44.2%) 70.9% 20 25,216 (54.7%) 20,844 (45.3%) 67.8%

References

1. "Battaglia finale per I nuovi sindaci" (in Italian). La Stampa. 20 June 1993. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
2. "Trionfano Formentini e Castellani" (in Italian). La Stampa. 21 June 1993. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
3. Rumiz, Paolo (2001). La secessione leggera. Dove nasce la rabbia del profondo Nord. Milan: Feltrinelli. pp. 10–13.
4. Signore, Adalberto; Trocino, Alessandro (2008). Razza padana. Milan: BUR. pp. 22–23, 57.
5. De Lucia, Michele (2011). Dossier Bossi-Lega Nord. Milan: Kaos. p. 1.
6. "Bossi riaccoglie Maroni e torna alle origini" (in Italian). Corriere della Sera. 8 May 1995. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
7. "Maroni: solo, ma vado al congresso" (in Italian). Corriere della Sera. 28 January 1995.
8. "Bossi fa già il vincitore" (in Italian). La Stampa. 19 June 1993. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
9. Municipality of Milan – Electoral archive