Meloni’s party wins in a record-high abstention election. The 2024 European parliament election in Italy

The 2024 European elections in Italy were a crucial test both for the ruling centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, and for the centre-left opposition, striving to establish an alternative bloc. Amid growing political disengagement, with abstention surpassing 50% for the first time, the elections saw gains for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) and the Democratic Party (PD) alongside the Green-Left Alliance (AVS). Conversely, the Five Star Movement (M5s) hit an historic low, and the centrist parties failed to secure representation in Brussels. The aim of this article is to examine these elections, and it does so by combining different analytical perspectives and empirical analyses. In particular, the article focuses on the voting context, considering the elections’ characteristic as second-order contests, the electoral rules, and the political line-ups among which voters were called upon to choose. And it considers the results, both at the aggregate level (considering turnout, party performance and territorial dynamics, vote flows) and the individual-level (considering the determinants of turnout, party choices, and the individual motives behind them).