Abstract
Local voting in Italy is a particularly complex topic. Municipal elections have no single election day, with contradictory effects: the overall impact of every single municipal round is difficult to assess, but in addition, each round becomes crucial for the national and regional political equilibria, especially when larger municipalities are involved. The local electoral system is extremely convoluted. It is basically a majority-assuring mixed system revolving around the mayor (directly elected since 1993) with appreciable effects in terms of responsiveness and accountability. It is, however, differentiated in several ways according to the size clusters of the municipalities, thus making local voting (and analysis) a real jungle of norms and mechanisms for seat allocation and vote counting. Local and independent lists display a remarkably high presence (around 90% of the total), especially in the small-sized municipalities that are a large percentage of all Italian municipalities. This makes the local arena only apparently nonpoliticized and makes it difficult to discern the nonetheless present role of nationwide parties.