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Italian general election, 1948

← 1946 18 April 1948 (1948-04-18) 1953 →
All 574 seats to the Italian Chamber of Deputies and 237 (of the 343) seats to the Italian Senate
Turnout	92.2%
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Alcide De Gasperi Palmiro Togliatti (PCI) (pictured) Pietro Nenni (PSI) Ivan Matteo Lombardo Party Christian Democracy Popular Democratic Front Socialist Unity Leader since 1944 1938 (Togliatti) 1931 (Nenni) 1948 Leader's seat VIII - Trentin-South Tirol XX - Latium (Togliatti) Whole Italy (Nenni) II - Piedmont Seats won 305 C / 131 S 183 C / 72 S 33 C / 10 S Popular vote 12,740,042 C 10,899,640 S 8,136,637 C 6,969,122 S 1,858,116 C 943,219 S Percentage 48.5% (C) 48.1% (S) 31.0% (C) 30.8% (S) 7.1% (C) 4.6% (S)
Election results maps for the Chamber of Deputies (on the left) and for the Senate (on the right). Light Blue denotes provinces with a Christian Democratic plurality, Red a Popular Front plurality, and Gray an Autonomist plurality.
Prime Minister before election Alcide De Gasperi Christian Democracy New Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi Christian Democracy

General elections were held in Italy on Sunday 18 April 1948 to elect the First Republican Parliament.^[1] They were heavily influenced by the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, and are now best known for the covert political warfare waged by the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party (DC).^[2][3]

After the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the US became alarmed about Soviet intentions and feared that, if the leftist coalition were to win the elections, the communist Left would draw Italy into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. As the last month of the election campaign began, the magazine Time pronounced the possible leftist victory to be "the brink of catastrophe".^[4]

The elections were eventually won with a comfortable margin by the Christian Democracy party (Italian: Democrazia Cristiana, DC) that defeated the left-wing coalition of the Popular Democratic Front (Italian: Fronte Democratico Popolare per la libertà, la pace, il lavoro, FDP) that comprised the Italian Communist Party (Italian: Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (Italian: Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI).

The Christian Democrats went on to form a government without the Communists, who had been in government from June 1944, when the first post-war government was formed, until May 1947.

Electoral system

The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly, was definitely adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates.^[5] In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota.

For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used: Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected.

This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.

Campaign

The elections remain unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history".^[6] The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society. On the one hand, a Roman Catholic, conservative and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing Christian Democrats of De Gasperi; on the other, a secular, revolutionary and socialist society, represented by the Popular Front.^[6]

The Christian Democrat campaign claimed that in communist countries, "children send parents to jail", "children are owned by the state", "people eat their own children", and assured voters that disaster would strike Italy if the Left were to take power.^[7][8] Another slogan was "In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you - Stalin doesn't."^[9]

The PCI was de facto leading the FDP and had effectively marginalised the PSI, which thus eventually suffered because in the elections, in terms of parliamentary seats and political power;^[10] The Socialists also had been hurt by the secession of a social-democratic faction led by Giuseppe Saragat, which contested the election with the concurrent list of Socialist Unity.

The PCI had difficulties in restraining its more militant members, who, in the period immediately after the war, had engaged in violent acts of reprisals. The areas affected by the violence (the so-called "Red Triangle" of Emilia, or parts of Liguria around Genoa and Savona, for instance) had previously seen episodes of brutality committed by the Fascists during Benito Mussolini's regime and the Italian Resistance during the Allies' gradual advance through Italy.

Superpower influence

The 1948 general election was greatly influenced by the Cold War that was starting between the United States and the Soviet Union.^[11]

The US Central Intelligence Agency, by its own admission, gave $1 million to Italian "center parties".^[12] and was accused of publishing forged letters in order to discredit the leaders of the Italian Communist Party.^[13] The National Security Act of 1947, that made foreign covert operations possible, had been signed into law about six months earlier by the American President Harry S. Truman.

Differences.

"We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," according to CIA operative F. Mark Wyatt.^[14]

In order to influence the election, the US agencies undertook a campaign of writing ten million letters, made numerous short-wave radio broadcasts and funded the publishing of books and articles, all of which warned the Italians of what was believed to be the consequences of a communist victory. Time Magazine backed the campaign and featured the Christian Democrat leader and Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi on its cover and in its lead story on 19 April 1948.^[8] Overall, the US funneled $10 million to $20 million into the country for specifically anti-PCI purposes. Additionally, millions of dollars from the Economic Cooperation Administration affiliated with the Marshall Plan were spent on anti-communist "information activities." ^[15]

It is claimed that the PCI was being funded by the Soviet Union.^[16] According to CIA operative Wyatt, "The Communist Party of Italy was funded…by black bags of money directly out of the Soviet compound in Rome; and the Italian services were aware of this. As the elections approached, the amounts grew, and the estimates [are] that $8 million to $10 million a month actually went into the coffers of communism. Not necessarily completely to the party: Mr. Di Vittorio and labor was powerful, and certainly a lot went to him," according to the former CIA operative.^[13] Although the numbers are disputed, there is evidence of some financial aid, described as occasional and modest,^[17] from the Kremlin.^[18] PCI official Pietro Secchia and Stalin discussed financial support.^[19]

The Christian Democrats eventually won the 1948 election with 48% of the vote, and the FDP received 31%. The CIA's practice of influencing the political situation was repeated in every Italian election for at least the next 24 years.^[14] A leftist coalition would not win a general election for the next 48 years, until 1996. That was partly because of Italians' traditional bent for conservatism and, even more importantly, the Cold War, with the US closely watching Italy, in their determination to maintain a vital NATO presence amidst the Mediterranean and retain the Yalta-agreed status quo of western Europe.^[20]

Parties and leaders

Results

Christian Democracy won a sweeping victory, taking 48.5 percent of the vote and 305 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 131 seats in the Senate. With an absolute majority in both chambers, DC leader and premier Alcide De Gasperi could have formed an exclusively DC government. Instead, he formed a "centrist" coalition with Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats. De Gasperi formed three ministries during the parliamentary term, the second one in 1950 after the defection of the Liberals, who hoped for more rightist politics, and the third one in 1951 after the defection of the Social-democrats, who hoped for more leftist politics.

Following a provision of the new republican constitution, all living democratic deputies elected during the 1924 general election and deposed by the National Fascist Party in 1926, automatically became members of the first republican Senate.

Chamber of Deputies

← Summary of the 18 April 1948 Chamber of Deputies election results →

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/−
	Christian Democracy	12,740,042	48.51	305	+98
	Popular Democratic Front	8,136,637	30.98	183	−36
	Socialist Unity	1,858,116	7.07	33	New
	National Bloc	1,003,727	3.82	19	−52
	Monarchist National Party	729,078	2.78	14	−2
	Italian Republican Party	651,875	2.48	9	−14
	Italian Social Movement	526,882	2.01	6	New
	South Tyrolean People's Party	124,243	0.47	3	New
	Party of Italian Peasants	95,914	0.37	1	±0
	Social Christian Party	72,854	0.28	0	±0
	Sardinian Action Party	61,928	0.24	1	−1
	Nationalist Movement for the Social Democracy	56,096	0.21	0	New
	Federalist Movements' Union	52,655	0.20	0	New
	Unionist People's Bloc	35,899	0.14	0	New
	Others	118,512	0.44	0	±0
Invalid/blank votes		591,283	–	–	–
Total		26,855,741	100	574	+18
Registered voters/turnout		29,117,270	92.23	–	–
Source: Ministry of the Interior

Senate of the Republic

Summary of the 18 April 1948 Senate of the Republic election results →

Party		Votes	%	Seats
	Christian Democracy	10,899,640	48.11	131
	Popular Democratic Front	6,969,122	30.76	72
	National Bloc	1,222,419	5.40	7
	Socialist Unity	943,219	4.16	8
	Socialist Unity–PRI	607,792	2.68	4
	Italian Republican Party	594,178	2.62	4
	Monarchist National Party	393,510	1.74	3
	Italian Social Movement	164,092	0.72	1
	South Tyrolean People's Party	94,406	0.42	2
	Party of Italian Peasants	65,986	0.29	0
	Sardinian Action Party	65,743	0.29	1
	Federalist Movements' Union	42,880	0.19	0
	Nationalist Movement for the Social Democracy	27,152	0.12	0
	Others	22,108	0.10	0
	Independents	544,039	2.40	4
Invalid/blank votes		1,185,629	–	–
Total		23,842,919	100	237
Registered voters/turnout		25,874,809	92.15	–
Source: Ministry of the Interior

References

• Brogi, Alessandro (2011). Confronting America: The Cold War Between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
  ISBN 978-0-8078-3473-2
  


• Callanan, James (2010). Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations, London/New York: I.B. Tauris,
  ISBN 978-1-84511-882-2
  


• Ventresca, Robert A. (2004). From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
  ISBN 0-8020-8768-X
  

Further reading

• 
  Blum, William (2000). Killing Hope. Common Courage Press. ISBN 978-1-56751-053-9. Chapter 2 Italy 1947-1948: Free elections: Hollywood style
  


• 
  Blum, William (2000). Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. Common Courage Press. ISBN 978-1-56751-194-9. Chapter 16 Perverting elections

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