Popular Support
The PR never gained massive support in elections, due to its loose organisation and eclectic profile: the party did not file candidates for all the elections and sometimes even supported abstention from voting. The party's best result was in the 1979 general election, when it won 3.5% of the vote. Although support for the party was uniform all around the country, it did better in the North (and especially in Piedmont) than in the South and generally speaking in large cities (Rome, Milan, Turin and Naples).
In the 1990s the two main successors of the party, the Pannella List and the Bonino List, that emphasised economic issues and supported a strongly libertarian approach, did particularly well in Northern regions, while the Italian Radicals (the new incarnation of the PR since 2001) lost many votes to Forza Italia after Radicals decided to return into the centre-left camp in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Radical Party (Italy)
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