What a coalition is
Why Italian parties stand together, what it commits them to, and why it pays.
What is an electoral coalition?
A formal agreement between lists that appear linked on the same ballot and back the same candidates in single-member districts.
It must be declared when symbols are filed: not an informal understanding announced during the campaign, but a commitment lodged with the Interior Ministry.
Source: Law 165/2017
Why does allying pay?
Because three eighths of the seats — 37.5%: 147 in the Chamber and 74 in the Senate — are decided in single-member districts, where whoever gets one vote more than anyone else wins the seat.
In those districts a coalition runs a single candidate and pools the votes of every list backing them. In 2022 the centre-right took about 44% of the vote and won more than four out of five single-member districts, because its opponents stood separately.
Source: Art. 1, d.P.R. 361/1957, and art. 1, d.lgs. 533/1993
Is a coalition binding after the election?
No. Nothing obliges parties allied at an election to stay together in parliament.
Once elected, members join parliamentary groups, which can form and dissolve freely. A coalition matters for seat allocation and thresholds, not for the life of the legislature.
What threshold must a coalition clear?
A coalition needs at least 10% of valid votes nationally, and must contain at least one linked list that clears a threshold of its own.
That internal threshold is not a single figure. In the Chamber one linked list above 3% nationally is enough, or a list representing recognised linguistic minorities standing only in a special-statute region that protects them, if it won at least 20% of valid votes in that region or had candidates elected in at least a quarter of the constituency’s single-member districts, rounded up. In the Senate the alternatives are 3% nationally, 20% in at least one region — including for a list that represents no minority — or, for minority lists, election in at least a quarter of the regional constituency’s single-member districts.
Within it, individual lists share in the seats if they clear 3%. Lists below 3% but above 1% win no seats of their own, yet their votes still count towards the coalition — which is why coalitions have every reason to include very small parties. Below 1% the votes do not count at all, save for the exceptions the law makes for minority lists in the Chamber and, in the Senate, for any list above 20% in a region.
Source: Art. 83(1)(c) and (e), d.P.R. 361/1957, and art. 16-bis(1)(c) and (e), d.lgs. 533/1993
Who gets into the proportional allocation
The same thresholds, for the four ways of standing. The row to read whole is the third: a list inside a coalition faces two thresholds, not one.
Each row is a kind of competitor, not a party. The solid bar shows where that competitor wins seats of its own; the hollow bar, where its votes only help somebody else.
1% · votes to the coalition3% · seats for the list10% · coalition admitted
A list standing on its own
seats of its own
A coalition of lists
seats to share among its admitted lists
A list inside a coalition
votes count for the coalitionseats of its own
A list representing a recognised linguistic minority
share of valid votes cast nationally
A list standing on its own
It shares in the allocation with at least 3% of valid votes nationally. Below that its votes go nowhere at all.
A coalition of lists
It needs at least 10% of valid votes, plus at least one linked list that clears a threshold of its own: 3% nationally, or one of the routes reserved for minority lists.
A list inside a coalition
Two thresholds on one row. Below 1% the votes do not even reach the coalition; between 1% and 3% they do, but the list wins no seats of its own; from 3% up it does.
A list representing a recognised linguistic minority
No national threshold. It must stand only in a special-statute region that protects that minority, and clear one of the two conditions below.
Its two routes are not measured on this axis:
- at least 20% of valid votes in that region
- candidates elected in at least a quarter of the constituency’s single-member districts, rounded up
In the Senate the 3% and 10% thresholds are the same, but the alternatives are assembled differently: 20% in one region is enough even for a list representing no minority, and the 1% rule carries the same exception.
The percentages are always of the valid votes cast in the whole country, even where the alternative route is regional: this is a national threshold with two side doors, not a regional one.
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