ROME (AP) – Exit polls early Monday indicated that center-right forces, including an anti-immigrant party, were headed to victory in several key mayoral runoffs, two weeks after a first round of voting saw most populist candidates eliminated in all big cities up for grabs.
An election alliance of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives, the anti-migrant Northern League party and a right-wing party with its power base in Rome, appeared to have triumphed in the most-watched race, Genoa, a working class port city in the Liguria region which had long been a stronghold for the political left.
In Sunday’s runoffs, center-left alliances anchored by former Premier Matteo Renzi’s Democrats had been hoping for support from voters who backed losing populist 5-Star Movement candidates in the June 11 first round. In that vote, the Movement, which bills itself as anti-establishment, failed to capture any main city, including Genoa, where 5-Star founder-comic Beppe Grillo lives.
National elections for Parliament and the premiership are due by spring 2018.
In the past, local voting results didn’t always correlate with national elections to choose a new Parliament in Rome as well as premier.