Italy’s centre left makes gains in regional elections, eyes twin win

ROME (Reuters) – Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and its disparate allies kept control of the wealthy northern region of Emilia-Romagna and eyed a possible upset in neighbouring Umbria, results from local elections showed on Monday.

While the left had been expected to win in Emilia-Romagna, a region it has governed since World War Two, opinion polls had suggested that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's conservative camp would remain in charge of Umbria.

A swift count in Emilia-Romagna, which is home to the Ferrari sports car and Parmesan cheese, gave the PD candidate Michele De Pascale an unassailable lead of some 56% to 41% over the centre-right candidate.

In Umbria, a small, landlocked region north of Rome, the centre-left's Stefania Proietti, mayor of the city of Assisi, was marginally ahead of the incumbent governor, Donatella Tesei, a member of the anti-immigrant League party of Matteo Salvini.

Meloni's bloc currently controls 14 out of Italy's 20 regions and has secured a number of wins since taking office in 2022, losing only to the centre-left opposition in a tight race on the island of Sardinia in February.

She has also maintained a solid lead in national opinion polls since triumphing at the head of a coalition in the 2022 parliamentary election, with her Brothers of Italy party the most popular group in the country, followed by the PD.

Headed by Elly Schlein, the PD has managed to shore up its own supporter base, but has failed to forge effective alliances with other opposition parties, especially the maverick 5-Star Movement, which is riven by furious internal divisions.

Highlighting its internal weaknesses, the centre-left bloc failed to wrest back control of the northwest region of Liguria last month, even though the ruling centre-right administration was mired in a corruption scandal.

The latest two regional elections came barely a week after violent protests in Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna, where hard-right demonstrators had faced off against anti-fascist groups in the city centre.

Bologna's left-wing mayor accused Meloni's government of dispatching rightist thugs to his city, while Salvini, who is a deputy prime minister, called the left-wing protesters "communist insects" – an insult used in the 1970s by Italian neo-fascists.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Alex Richardson)