Italy's opposition warns of 'democratic crisis' after low referendum turnout

Local Italy

10-06-2025

The citizenship referendum, along with four others relating to workers' rights held over June 8th and 9th, drew just over 30 percent of the electorate – far lower than the threshold of more than 50 percent required for their results to be valid.
Maurizio Landini, leader of Italian trade union CGIL which had promoted the referendums, slammed the low turnout as a sign of a "clear democratic crisis" in Italy.
But the result was celebrated as a victory by Italy's hard-right coalition government, which strongly opposed the proposed reforms and had publicly called on its supporters to boycott the vote.
"YOU LOST" Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party posted to Facebook shortly after the results were announced on Monday afternoon, with the letters superimposed over a picture of opposition party leaders who had supported the reforms.
Meloni announced last week that she would go to her polling station but not vote in any of the referendums, saying that abstention was 'a right for everyone'.
"I don't agree with the subjects of the referendums and, as has always been the case in the nation's history, when you don't agree, abstention is also an option," she said.
Of 77 referendums held over the past 50 years, only 39 met the voter threshold, and only four of those were held in the past 30 years.
It's unclear how much of an impact the government's abstention campaign had on the turnout in this referendum.
Riccardo Magi, leader of the centrist +Europa party, which had campaigned for the citizenship reform, said that "organised abstentionism strengthened by spontaneous abstentionism and lack of information" had won the day.
Lorenzo Pregliasco, head of political polling agency Youtrend, told Huffpost Italia that the results showed that the referendum is "a tool in crisis".
But there were other factors at play, he warned.
"The referendum was politicised, particularly in the last few weeks [...]; the campaign wasn't inclusive of voters who weren't necessarily on the left," he said.
"This may have pushed out those voters who were less militant and could have made the difference."
It's not uncommon for politicians in Italy to tie support for a referendum to support for their own party – a strategy that's been known to backfire.
In 2016, former PM Matteo Renzi was forced to step down after he said that a vote for his referendum on constitutional reform was a vote of confidence in his leadership – and lost.
"The only real goal of this referendum was to bring down the Meloni government. In the end, however, it was the Italians who brought you down," Brothers of Italy wrote in the caption to their Facebook post.
Meanwhile Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, did her best to present the result as a win for the opposition.
"More voters voted for these referendums than those who put Meloni in government in 2022," she told reporters on Monday evening.
"Politics that celebrates abstention only hurts itself."
Following Monday's result, calls for a reform of referendum rules came from both ends of the political spectrum.
"We may need to change the referendum law, we probably need more signatures, not least because we spent so much money to send millions of ballots to Italians abroad that went unused,' said Deputy PM Antonio Tajani.
Under current rules, if a petition to change the law collects 500,000 signatures, the government must hold a public vote – which was the basis for introducing the referendum on citizenship.
Others said the solution wasn't to lower the threshold for staging a referendum but to lower or even eliminate the voter threshold (or quorum).
'We'll need to adopt a different approach" given that 'no referendum has reached the quorum in recent years,' Benevento Mayor Clemente Mastella said.
New rules should include the 'lowering of the quorum, which now seems almost impossible to reach,' he added.