Italian Liberal Party - Popular Support

Popular Support

Before the World Wars the Liberals were the political establishment that governed Italy for decades. Their political base of support was in Piedmont, where many leading liberal politicians of the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Italy (including both Camillo Cavour and Giovanni Giolitti) hailed from, and Southern Italy. The Liberals never gained large support after World War II as they were not able to become a mass party and were replaced by Christian Democracy as the dominant political force of the country. In the 1946 general election, the first after the war, the Liberal Party gained 6.8% as part of the National Democratic Union. At that time they were strong especially in the South, as Christian Democracy was mainly rooted in the North: 21.0% in Campania, 22.8% in Basilicata, 10.4% in Apulia, 12.8% in Calabria and 13.6% in Sicily.

The party's main constituency were the industrial elites of the North-West, the so-called "industrial triangle" formed by Turin, Milan and Genoa. The Liberals had their best results in the 1960s, when they were rewarded by liberal-conservative voters for their opposition to the participation of the Italian Socialist Party to the government. The party won 7.0% of the vote in 1963 (15.2% in Turin, 18.7% in Milan and 11.5% in Genoa) and 5.8% 1963. Liberals suffered a decline in the 1970s and settled around 2–3% in the 1980s, when their strongholds were reduced to Piedmont, and especially the provinces of Torino and Cuneo, and, to a minor extent, Western Lombardy, Liguria and Sicily.

As the other parties of the Pentapartito coalition (Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans and Democratic Socialists), Liberals strengthened their grip on the South, while in the North they all would have lost many votes to Lega Nord and its regional precursors. In the 1992 general election, the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PLI won 2.9% of the vote, a decent result thanks to the increase of votes from the South, which can be considered the Indian summer of the party before the 1992–1994 storm.

After the end of the "First Republic" former Liberals were very influent within Forza Italia (FI) in Piedmont, Liguria and, strangely enough, in Veneto, where Giancarlo Galan was three times elected President. Former Liberals are still dominant within the ranks of The People of Freedom (the successor of FI) in the province of Cuneo and in Liguria.