General elections were held in Italy on 26 October 1913, with a second round of voting on 2 November.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1047 The Liberals (the former Ministeriali) narrowly retained an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, while the Radical Party emerged as the largest opposition bloc. Both groupings did particularly well in Southern Italy, while the Italian Socialist Party gained eight seats and was the largest party in Emilia-Romagna.Piergiorgio Corbetta; Maria Serena Piretti, Atlante storico-elettorale d'Italia, Zanichelli, Bologna 2009 However, the election marked the beginning of the decline of Liberal establishment.
There were episodes of violence during the election.
Background The two historical parliamentary factions, the liberal and progressive Left and the conservative and monarchist Right, formed a single liberal and centrist group, known as Liberals, under the leadership of Giovanni Giolitti. This phenomenon, known in Italian as Trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism"—in a satirical newspaper, the PM was depicted as a chameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until after World War I. Two parliamentary factions alternated in government, one led by Sidney Sonnino and the other, by far the larger of the two, by Giolitti. At that time the Liberals governed in alliance with the Radicals, the Democrats and, eventually, the Reform Socialists.Italian Liberal Party , Britannica Concise This alliance governed against two smaller opposition: The Clericals, composed by some Vatican-oriented politicians, The Extreme, formed by the socialist faction which represented a real left in a present-day concept.
Electoral reform Changes made in 1912 widened the voting franchise to include literate men aged 21, men who had served in the army or navy (regardless of whether they were 21 years old), and illiterate men over the age of 30.Nohlen & Stöver, p1031 This raised the number of eligible voters from 2,930,473 in 1909 to 8,443,205.Nohlen & Stöver, p1050 The electoral system remained single-member constituencies with two-round majority voting.
Parties and leaders PartyIdeologyLeaderLiberalsLiberalism Giovanni Giolitti Italian Socialist Party (PSI) Socialism Costantino Lazzari Italian Radical Party (PR) Radicalism Ettore Sacchi Constitutional Democratic Party (PDC) Social liberalism several Italian Catholic Electoral Union (UECI) Christian democracy Ottorino Gentiloni Italian Reformist Socialist Party (PSRI) Social democracy Leonida Bissolati Democratic Party (PD) Social liberalism several Italian Republican Party (PRI) Republicanism Napoleone Colajanni Conservative Catholics (CC) Conservatism several
Results
Leading party by region Region First party Second party Third party Abruzzo-Molise Liberals PSI PR Apulia Liberals PSI PR Basilicata Liberals PR PSI Calabria Liberals PR PSI Campania Liberals PR PSI Emilia-Romagna PSI Liberals PR Lazio Liberals PSI PR Liguria Liberals PSI PR Lombardy PSI Liberals PR Marche Liberals PSI PR Piedmont Liberals PSI PR Sardinia Liberals PSI PR Sicily Liberals PR PSI Tuscany PSI Liberals PR Umbria PSI Liberals PR Veneto Liberals PSI PR
References