ROME, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Italy's populist parties strengthened their hand after a series of local and regional elections held across the country on Sunday, though a referendum that would have ushered in changes to the country's judicial system failed due to historically low voter turnout.
According to data released Monday, right-wing populist parties including the League, the Brothers of Italy, the Five Star Movement, and Forza Italia led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi were dominant in voting in 26 provincial and regional capitals.
The Brothers of Italy party headed by Giorgia Meloni was the biggest winner. The one-time fringe party may now be the most popular party in Italy, according to exit polls.
The vote was significant as the last major set of elections in Italy before a national parliamentary vote set to take place in 2023.
The populist parties already controlled the governments in many of the cities that voted, but one major prize they won was the Sicilian capital of Palermo, which was flipped from a left-wing alliance that included the Democratic Party, a senior member of the ruling government coalition headed by Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Though the local and regional votes do not have a direct impact on the national government, they are seen as a gauge of the relative strength of the country's main political organizations.
"These populist parties have more than half the total vote," Lorenzo De Sio, a political science professor from Rome's LUISS University, told Xinhua.
"The results of the elections weren't a big surprise. But unless something unexpected happens between now and then, it's hard to see how a centrist coalition would manage to do well in next year's election," he said.
A measure of positive news for the center-left parties was the success of former football star Damiano Tommasi, who finished first in a crowded field of candidates vying to lead the northern city of Verona. But Tommasi fell short of winning 50 percent of the vote and so will face a run-off election on June 26.
De Sio said that in the near term, little would change in Italy politically aside from the local and regional areas that held votes. That view was reflected in Italian media reports, though many of those reports also said that over the next several months government policy could start to be shaped by concerns connected to the upcoming parliamentary elections.
One change that won't take place is the judicial reform championed by Matteo Salvini, the head of the League. The measure failed when voter turnout totaled just 20.9 percent, short of the 50-percent threshold required for the results of a national referendum to be legally valid. ■