Populists’ surge in Italy stops in voting for Italy’s mayors

ROME – Nearly complete Italian mayoral election results confirm that voters have rejected populist candidates.

With most ballots counted from elections a day earlier in a thousand small cities and towns, the 5-Star Movement imploded in all big races including in Genoa, home of leader-comic Beppe Grillo.

Voters thrashed the anti-euro movement, which bills itself as anti-establishment, exactly a year after 5-Stars captured Rome’s city hall, fueling the populists’ ambitions to win a national election.

In all but one of the top cities up for grabs, candidates from centre-right and centre-left alliances earned berths in June 25 runoffs, since none clinched more than 50 per cent of the votes.

The exception was Palermo, where 40 per cent is the threshold. There anti-Mafia maverick Leoluca Orlando won a fifth term.