The 1994 Italian general election was held on 27 and 28 March 1994 to elect members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic for the 12th legislature. Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition won a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies but just missed winning a majority in the Senate.
The Italian People's Party, the official heir of Christian Democracy party, which had dominated Italian politics for almost half a century, was decimated. It took only 29 seats versus 206 for the DC two years earlierâÂÂeasily the worst defeat a sitting government in Italy has ever suffered enough, and one of the worst ever suffered by a Western European governing party.
A new electoral system was introduced for these elections following the 1993 Italian referendum, which repealed the "supermajority clause" concerning Senate elections. Previously, this clause had effectively resulted in Senate elections being conducted using a system close to pure proportional representation.
Under the new system, 75% of the Senate seats were elected through a plurality voting system in single-member constituencies, while the remaining 25% were allocated proportionally in a compensatory manner. This reform significantly changed the structure of parliamentary elections by introducing a mixed electoral system.
Parliament also passed a new electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies in order to align it more closely with the Senate's electoral rules. Under this law, 75% of the seats were filled through plurality voting in single-member districts, while the remaining 25% were distributed proportionally using a supplementary system with a minimum electoral threshold of 4% of the vote.
The new electoral system became widely known as the Mattarellum, named after Sergio Mattarella, who was the main proponent of the reform.
In 1992, the five pro-Western governing parties (Christian Democracy, the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party, the Italian Republican Party, and the Italian Liberal Party) lost much of their electoral strength almost overnight due to a large number of judicial investigations concerning the financial corruption of many of their foremost members. This led to a general expectation that upcoming elections would be won by the Democratic Party of the Left, the heir of the former Italian Communist Party, and its Progressives coalition unless there was an alternative.
On 26 January 1994, the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi announced his decision to enter politics, ("enter the field", in his own words) presenting his own political party, Forza Italia, on a platform focused on defeating "the communists". His political aim was to convince the voters of the Pentapartito, the usual five governing parties who were shocked and confused by Mani Pulite scandals, that Forza Italia offered both novelty and the continuation of the pro-Western free-market policies followed by Italy since the end of World War II. Shortly after he decided to enter the political arena, investigators into the Mani Pulite affair were said to be close to issuing warrants for the arrest of Berlusconi and senior executives of his business group. During his years of political career, Berlusconi repeatedly stated that the Mani Pulite investigations were led by communist prosecutors who wanted to establish a Soviet-style government in Italy.
In order to win the election, Berlusconi formed two separate electoral alliances: the Pole of Freedoms (Polo delle LibertÃÂ ) with the Northern League (Lega Nord) in northern Italian districts, and another, the Pole of Good Government (Polo del Buon Governo), with the post-fascist National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale; heir to the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement), in central and southern regions. In a shrewd pragmatic move, he did not ally with the latter in the North because the League disliked them. As a result, Forza Italia was allied with two parties that were not allied with each other.
Berlusconi launched a massive campaign of electoral advertisements on his three TV networks. He subsequently won the election, with Forza Italia garnering 21% of the popular vote, the highest percentage of any single party, narrowly ahead of the Democratic Party of the Left, which finished less than 1% behind. One of the most significant promises that he made in order to secure victory was that his government would create "one million more jobs". On the other side, the center-left Progressives led by Achille Occhetto, also called "the Joyful War Machine", was composed by the two party born from the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party: the Democratic Party of the Left and Communist Refoundation Party. Since the alliance was sure of victory, its campaign was focused on criticizing the media power of Berlusconi.
Berlusconi's alliance won a decisive victory over the Progressives, becoming the first centre-right coalition to win a general election in Italy since the end of the Second World War. Berlusconi's coalition won in the main regions of Italy: the strongest parties in Northern Italy were the regionalist Northern League and Forza Italia, which was also able to win in all provinces of Sicily, while the National Alliance received more votes in Southern Italy. The Alliance of Progressive confirmed its predominance in the Red Belt regions of Central Italy, and in the South.
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Contrary to its success in the Chamber of Deputies, the Pole failed to win a majority in the Senate. Nevertheless, the first Berlusconi government obtained a vote of confidence in the Senate thanks to the abstention of four PPI senators (Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Stefano Cusumano, Luigi Grillo, and Tomaso Zanoletti), who decided not to take part in the vote. The vote of the Senators for life was not decisive, as three (Gianni Agnelli, Francesco Cossiga, and Giovanni Leone) voted in favour of the government, three were absent (Carlo Bo, Norberto Bobbio, and Amintore Fanfani) and five voted against (Giulio Andreotti, Francesco De Martino, Giovanni Spadolini, Paolo Emilio Taviani, and Leo Valiani). As a result, the Senate gave Berlusconi 159 votes in favour and 153 against.
Commenting on the historical significance of Berlusconi's victory, together with the complexity of his alliance, the British historian Martin Clark observed: "It was an extraordinary transformation: 70 per cent of the deputies and senators won seats for the first time. The corrupt old parties were replaced by a 'new Right': 97 businessmen and media executives of FI, 122 small businessmen and artisans of the League, bent on a Sack of Rome, and 109 'post-Fascists,' advocates prominent among them, desperate to preserve 'Italy' from the League and social spending from the free marketeers."