1978 Italian presidential election

The Italian presidential election of 1978 was held in Italy between 29 June and 8 July 1978, following the resignation of incumbent President Giovanni Leone on 15 June 1978 because of the Lockheed bribery scandals.

1978 Italian presidential election

29 June – 8 July 1978

1,011 voters
(323 Senators, 630 Deputies
and 58 regional representatives)
675 or 506 votes needed to win
 
Nominee Sandro Pertini
Party Socialist Party
Electoral vote 832
Percentage 82.3%

Result on the sixteenth ballot
(8 July 1978)

  Pertini 832   Others 36

  Invalids, blanks, abstentions 143

President before election

Giovanni Leone
DC

Elected President

Sandro Pertini
PSI

Only members of Parliament and regional delegates were entitled to vote, most of these electors having been elected in the 1976 general election and in the 1975 regional elections. As head of state of the Italian Republic, the President has a role of representation of national unity and guarantees that Italian politics comply with the Italian Constitution, in the framework of a parliamentary system.

On 8 July 1978 former socialist partisan and President of the Chamber of Deputies Sandro Pertini was elected President with 832 votes out of 1,011, the biggest majority ever obtained by an elected President.

Procedure

In accordance to the Italian Constitution, the election was held in the form of a secret ballot, with the Senators and the Deputies entitled to vote. The election was held in the Palazzo Montecitorio, home of the Chamber of Deputies, with the capacity of the building expanded for the purpose. The first three ballots required a two-thirds majority of the 1,011 voters in order to elect a president, or 675 votes. Starting from the fourth ballot, an absolute majority was required for candidates to be elected, or 506 votes. The presidential mandate lasts seven years.

The election was presided over by the President of the Chamber of Deputies Pietro Ingrao, who proceeded to the public counting of the votes, and by the Vice president of the Senate Luigi Carraro, since President Amintore Fanfani was serving as acting President of the Republic.

Candidates

Chronology

Sandro Pertini taking the oath in front of the Parliament near the President of the Chamber of Deputies Pietro Ingrao on 9 July 1978

The extremely disputed Giovanni Leone's presidency came to an end in June 1978 due to allegations made in the United States over Lockheed bribing a number of high-profile politicians in Italy to purchase Hercules Aircraft for the military. Even if the accusation was never proved, Leone decided to resign in order to prevent the beginning of the so called "white semester" (semestre bianco), the six months period before the end of a presidential mandate during which the President cannot dissolve the Parliament and call a general election.

Leone's resignation came during a very difficult moment for the Italian Republic. Tight in the grip of the Years of Lead and of the strategy of tension, the country had suffered major terrorist attacks during the decade, such as 1974 Piazza della Loggia bombing and 1974 Italicus Express bombing. The climax of tension came in March 1978, when the former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed by a unit of the militant far-left organisation known as the Red Brigades while on his way to a session of the Chamber of Deputies where a discussion was to take place regarding a vote of confidence for a new government that would have had for the first time ever the support of the Italian Communist Party. Politically, Moro's stance to find an accommodation between the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party was a way to lead the country out of the tensions and to make the republic institutions more solid and stable as response to domestic terrorism. The Historic Compromise was made possible by the new course inaugurated by the new communist leader Enrico Berlinguer, who in 1973 launched in communist magazine Rinascita a proposal for a "democratic alliance" with Christian Democracy in order to prevent a coup d'état similar to the Chilean one. However the sudden death of Moro was an hard blow to the Historical Compromise politics and a major defeat for the republic institutions in front of the public opinion.

In that context, in summer 1978 the Italian Parliament convened to elect a new President. After 1976 general election, the left-wing parties together detained now a narrow majority in both houses of the Parliament and claimed the next President must have been a leftist one. After a long negotiation, the parties of the so called "constitutional arch" (Arco Costituzionale) - an expression used to indicate all the democratic parties represented in Parliament with the exception of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement - found a deal on the name of the popular socialist lawmaker and former partisan Sandro Pertini.

On 8 July 1978 Pertini was finally elected President with the largest majority ever obtained in an Italian presidential election and sworn in as the new President one day after.

Results

Candidate First round
29 June 1978
Second round
30 June 1978
Third round
30 June 1978
Fourth round
1 July 1978
Fifth round
2 July 1978
Sixth round
2 July 1978
Seventh round
3 July 1978
Eighth round
4 July 1978
Ninth round
4 July 1978
Guido Gonella392383351
Giorgio Amendola339337339335358350357358357
Pietro Nenni888681
Orazio Condorelli262725
Ferruccio Parri202120
Aldo Bozzi153523161512
Luigi Mariotti15182
Paolo Rossi1110111513151717
Benigno Zaccagnini215
Sandro Pertini546104
Other candidates292932273016171026
Blank papers794848777073136142127
Invalid papers1924423214
Abstentions192828531534544464466471
Total1,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,011
Candidate Tenth round
5 July 1978
Eleventh round
5 July 1978
Twelfth round
6 July 1978
Thirteenth round
7 July 1978
Fourteenth round
7 July 1978
Fifteenth round
7 July 1978
Sixteenth round
8 July 1978
Giorgio Amendola3553553543643553474
Aldo Bozzi1110121099
Luigi Mariotti4333
Paolo Rossi1721221818152
Sandro Pertini235832
Francesco De Martino419359
Other candidates16222024212221
Blank papers10691101887692121
Invalid papers3212116
Abstentions50150650350050748217
Total1,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,0111,011
Source: Presidency of the Republic

References

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