Italian elections: Voters choose populists, deliver rebuke to Europe
- The right-wing coalition cobbled together by Silvio Berlusconi won the most combined votes at 37%, but the League came out on top of the bloc, winning roughly 17.4% of the votes to Forza Italia's 14%. The swing toward the League, led by Matteo Salvini, looks set to give the party as many as 123 seats in the lower house, up from 22 seats, an almost six-fold increase.
- Berlusconi's Forza Italia party fared worse than expected, and the former prime minister appears to have failed in his attempt to position himself as the election's kingmaker.
- With around 32.7% of the vote, M5S outperformed final opinion polls. The party dominated in the south of Italy, receiving almost one in two votes in a region where youth unemployment is historically high.
- Italy's center-left coalition had a bad night, mustering about 23% of the vote. It is likely to end up as the third-largest group in parliament behind the right-wing coalition and M5S.
- Italy looks set to enter a period of political deadlock -- facing weeks, if not months, of negotiations between groups with competing interests to form a government.
- Former Prime Minister and Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi stepped down from his role after it suffered a worse than expected performance.
