Italy’s eurosceptic 5-Star Movement holds SHOCK lead in opinion polls with only WEEK left

Opinion polls award 5-Star roughly 28 percent of the overall vote, with ratings far higher in southern towns such as Pomigliano, where unemployment is twice the national average.

Putting his faith behind the anti-establishment Movement after becoming laid off, Domenico Ilardi, 58, said: “There is no work here and the other parties have abandoned us.”

A Fiat car plant in Pomigliano has roughly only 4,000 of the 18,000 workers it had in the 1980s.

As Italy’s voting system favours pre-election alliances rejected by 5-Star, however, the party has little chance of governing on its own and lacks the conservative coalition of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A 5-Star opposed the electoral law, approved by parliament in October, that allows parties to form alliances before the election to maximise their total votes, regardless of common programs or common leaders.

To win a working majority in parliament, pollsters say Berlusconi’s four-party centre-right bloc – which dominates in northern Italy – must defeat 5-Star in dozens of southern marginal seats.

Towns like Pomigliano, best known for its Fiat factory and a scandal involving toxic industrial waste buried in the countryside by the local mafia, prove to be a golden opportunity for the party.

On March 4th, the parliamentary elections will pit 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio against his centre-right rival Vittorio Sgarbi.

Mr Sgarbi is a celebrity art critic known for foul-mouthed tirades and has called 31-year-old Di Maio a “cockroach” and “ignorant goat”.

Giuseppe Gambardella, a 76-year-old priest, who helps about 800 of Pomigliano’s poorest pay bills and buy medicines, spoke affectionately of Di Maio, who attended his church as a boy.

He said 5-Star, formed nine years ago by comedian Beppe Grillo, is “the only party that offers hope of a new way of doing things.

“Poverty has risen dramatically, there are people who cannot pay their bills who ask us for candles to light their houses, like in wartime.”

In southern Italy, where both organised crime and political graft are endemic, 5-Star’s platforms an anti-corruption message and universal income support provide some much-needed solace.

On Sunday, voters will elect 945 members of the parliament for the 18th legislature since 1948.

Similar to Britain, Italians don’t elect the Prime Minister – they can only vote for candidates who are chosen by the parties and will become members of the chambers.

The President – chosen by Parliament every seven years – then chooses the PM; typically the winning party or coalition’s leader.

LC-MA calculations, based on various polling institutions, put the Five Star Movement on 27.8 per cent.