A party that did not exist at the start of the year has emerged as Italy’s fourth-largest political force, according to two recent polls, complicating Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s path to a second term just as she becomes Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister.
Futuro Nazionale (National Future), founded in February by former army general Roberto Vannacci, reached 7.5 percent in an SWG survey for the La7 television channel dated Aug. 31, edging past Forza Italia, the party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi and the second-largest member of Meloni’s coalition, at 7.1 percent.
The poll of 1,200 adults put Meloni’s Brothers of Italy first at 26.8 percent, ahead of the left-wing Democratic Party at 20.7 percent.
Matteo Salvini’s League, which Vannacci quit in February, stood at 5.7 percent.
A BiDiMedia survey published Aug. 26 already placed the new party fourth at 8 percent, ahead of Forza Italia at 7.3 percent, and the League at 4.8 percent.
It found that Meloni’s coalition would total 47.2 percent with Vannacci’s party but only 39.2 percent without it, behind the center-left bloc at 44.7 percent.
Attacked Into Prominence
Vannacci, a former commander of Italy’s elite Folgore paratrooper brigade, shot to prominence in August 2023 with a self-published book, “Il mondo al contrario” (The World Upside Down), which topped Amazon Italy’s bestseller list after its passages on immigration and the LGBT movement ignited a national controversy.
“He was attacked relentlessly, and that made him popular,” Luca Steinmann, an Italian journalist who covers Italian politics for Brussels Signal, told The Epoch Times.
Salvini brought him into the League and made him its deputy leader. A member of the European Parliament since 2024, Vannacci quit the party on Feb. 3, denouncing what he called a watered-down version of the right and vowing to launch an uncompromising right-wing party.
At the time, pollsters predicted he might win up to 2 percent of the vote.
“Futuro Nazionale is, for all practical purposes, a one-man party,” Steinmann said.
Its voters, mostly former League supporters along with some from Brothers of Italy, want “a stricter position on migration and security, and a harder stance toward the European institutions,” Steinmann said.
Lorenzo Pregliasco, founding partner of Italian polling firm YouTrend and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Bologna, told The Epoch Times that the rise owes much to a “novelty effect,” since Futuro Nazionale is the only new party to emerge since the 2022 election, as well as to the League’s leadership crisis and to Vannacci’s ability “to get his message across, to create debate.”
Meloni’s Dilemma
Meloni has kept her distance. She told the weekly Chi in August that everything she had seen of Vannacci’s movement so far described “an operation built to favor the left.”
Cracks appeared on Aug. 27, when Deputy Foreign Minister Edmondo Cirielli of Brothers of Italy said he hoped “we can govern together with Vannacci.” His comments drew criticism from within the party, prompting Cirielli to later clarify that an alliance was “not on the agenda.”
Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani dismissed the BiDiMedia figures.
“It’s a poll. Others say the opposite. I look at votes,” he said, calling Vannacci “a representative of the opposition.”
Pregliasco said Brothers of Italy’s “first option” would be to keep Vannacci out, since an alliance would strain Forza Italia and the League and would end the “useful vote” argument against backing a party outside the coalition.
“If it keeps growing in polls, it becomes, however, increasingly difficult to leave him out,” he said.
Steinmann said, “There is no unified position within the government, or even within Brothers of Italy.”
If the centrist and left-wing parties unite in a single coalition, “Vannacci becomes decisive, and therefore a problem,” he said.
Electoral Reform Raises the Stakes
The arithmetic could hinge on an electoral reform approved by the Chamber of Deputies on July 16 and due before the Senate this month.
It would award 70 bonus seats in the lower house and 35 in the Senate to a coalition winning at least 42 percent of the vote, a threshold Meloni’s current allies would miss without Vannacci on the BiDiMedia numbers.
Under the current system, “it is more likely to end up with a hung parliament,” Pregliasco said.
“The national elections of 2027 are open,” he said, though the center-left’s “major vulnerability is the lack of a clear leadership,” in contrast to “Meloni’s grip on the center-right, which is uncontested,” he added.
Tone and Ukraine
The differences between Meloni and Vannacci are more of tone than of worldview, Pregliasco said.
Vannacci calls for “remigration” and is more hostile to the EU, but is above all “way more provocative,” he said.
The clearest divergence is Ukraine, he added.
Meloni has backed Kyiv since the start of the war, Pregliasco noted, while Vannacci “is seen as friendly with Russia.”
Steinmann said Meloni is “trying to present herself as the politician who can unify the West, bringing together Americans and Europeans on the right,” while Vannacci “plays the nationalist card: We should talk to Russia, we should talk to the United States, and we should simply defend Italy’s interests.”
“In the end, everything depends on whether Vannacci is brought into the governing coalition,” Steinmann said. “If he is, it could become more difficult for him to maintain that tone, including on Ukraine.”
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