Abstract
The article is based on the thesis that the provincial elections on 22 October 2023 have broken previous patterns of (party) politics. This concerns the gradual decline of the South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP) as a ethnic catch-all party, the increasing fragmentation of the party landscape in the German-speaking electoral arena, and the rise of protest and populist parties whichincludes anti-vaccination and highly personalised parties. For the first time, two inter-ethnic parties have entered in the provincial parliament alongside the Greens with the Vita list. What is not a new trend is that the Italian-speaking population is participating in the elections around 20 per cent less than average. As a result, Italians now only make up five of the 35 members of the provincial parliament. Overall, one can speak of a right-wing populist trend and of a thought-provoking election, especially as the two governing parties SVP and Lega suffered heavy losses. However, the widely shared assumption that the majority of the Italian population voted for right-wing parties is misguided. In reality their votes are split roughly equally between right-wing and centre-left parties.