— Ch. 1 · Electoral System Mechanics —
1948 Italian general election.
~6 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly was adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota. For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used. Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected. This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.
Cold War Geopolitics
General elections were held in Italy on the 18th of April 1948 to elect the first Parliament of the Italian Republic. After the Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the U.S. became alarmed about Soviet intentions in Central Europe. They feared that Italy would be drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence if the leftist Popular Democratic Front won the election. As the last month of the election campaign began, Time magazine published an article which argued that an FDP victory would push Italy to "the brink of catastrophe". The election remained unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history". The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society. On the right, a Roman Catholic, conservative and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing Christian Democrats of De Gasperi. On the left a secular, revolutionary and socialist society, linked to the Soviet Union and represented by the FDP coalition led by the PCI.