Paolo Becchi and the suspicion on Bonaccini: "What his words hide". The big risk on the vote in Emilia

In Emilia-Romagna the vote is on January 26 and seems to have become Italian Ohio. If the center-right wins, Zingaretti will no longer agree to keep the government on its feet, if the center-left wins it is likely that the Conte bis will continue for a while longer.
Emilia is the red region par excellence, where the center-left has reigned undisturbed for fifty years, so if for the first time in history the center-right plays with peers with the former Stalinists it is already something. Until a few years ago it was simply unthinkable. The M5S could do the scale needle, which will run alone to recover a minimum of political independence from the Pd. Without those votes, the center-left coalition could break at the last meter like a gallop trotter. But the salient fact is that on January 26 both the center-left and the center-right could win, with no losers or actual winners. We will explain ourselves better.

The regional electoral system provides for a majority system (with a majority bonus), in a single shift and with a separate vote. In practice, the candidate president who obtains the relative majority of the votes gets the presidency of the regional council and an absolute majority in the regional council (27 seats out of 50). It is said, in these cases, that the winning President candidate "the Council pulls itself behind". Substantially the same regional system in force in almost all the regions. Therefore the awarding of the majority prize goes to the coalition of lists which supports the candidate who obtained the most votes (a relative majority is sufficient) with respect to the candidate presidential candidates.

But this only applies if no list or coalition of lists alone gets 50% plus one of the votes. In this case no one could take away anyone's seats, nor give them to others with the majority prize. This means that in Emilia-Romagna anything can really happen. Stefano Bonaccini, the outgoing presidential candidate of the Democratic Party who has removed the Democratic Party from his posters could come up against Lucia Bergonzoni, candidate of the center-right, but the center-right coalition could in turn overcome the fateful threshold of half plus one of the votes as list votes. In this case, no one could remove the absolute majority of seats in the Regional Council from the center. If Bergonzoni, due to the split vote, took fewer votes than Bonaccini, we would have a paradoxical situation: Bonaccini, president of the Giunta, but with a center-right majority in the regional council (realistically, 26 seats out of 50).

In practice, a victory for Salvini, who would keep the president of the Democratic Party (PD) down by knocking him out when he wants if he does not at least complete a part of the center-right program. A sort of "lame duck", as is usually called a situation of this kind at the municipal level. A Bonaccini-center-right cohabitation. This scenario is made possible by the dirty role the M5S is playing. By presenting themselves, the pentastellars – to avoid delivering the Emilia to a candidate who is a direct expression of Salvini – are already working on the package: ask their electorate to make a separate vote, ie vote for M5S as a list and tick Bonaccini as candidate for president . In conclusion, the game is open and could end in a draw.

by Paolo Becchi and Giuseppe Palma