Italy poised for glass ceiling-shattering vote, hard right turn

ROME — Italy is poised on Sunday for a norm-breaking election that’s expected to give the country its first-ever female prime minister — and its farthest-right government since the fall of Mussolini.

The vote is forecast to deliver victory to a coalition that includes two far-right forces, including the Fratelli d’Italia party of Giorgia Meloni, a once-marginal figure who vows to defend “traditional” social values, close off pathways to undocumented immigrants and push back against the “obscure bureaucrats” of Brussels.

While the rise of Meloni and the far right could ultimately turn into an epochal event in European politics — pushing Italy into an illiberal bloc with Poland and Hungary — it’s difficult for leaders to hold on to power in Rome, where zigzags are the norm, and the typical government lasts no more than 400 days. Meloni would face immediate tests at home and in Europe, given fatigue over soaring energy prices and divisions within her own coalition on Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.The vote Sunday only fills the seats of parliament; the prime minister will be chosen later, indirectly. But if Fratelli d’Italia emerges with the most votes of any party in the fragmented system, it will give Meloni — a 45-year-old Roman who quotes pop songs and delights in bashing the “woke” left — the best shot at receiving the mandate from Italy’s president to form a government.