1979 Italian Senate election in Lombardy

June 3, 1979
All 48 Lombard seats to the Italian Senate
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Benigno Zaccagnini Enrico Berlinguer Bettino Craxi Party DC PCI PSI Last election 41.8%, 21 seats 30.7%, 16 seats 11.8%, 6 seats Seats won 21 15 6 Seat change = 1 = Popular vote 2,117,789 1,530,781 620,900 Percentage 40.7% 29.4% 11.9% Swing 1.1% 1.3% 0.1%
Old local plurality before election DC New local plurality DC

Lombardy elected its eighth delegation to the Italian Senate on June 3, 1979. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 1979 even if, according to the Italian Constitution, every senatorial challenge in each Region is a single and independent race.

The election was won by the centrist Christian Democracy, as it happened at national level. Seven Lombard provinces gave a majority or at least a plurality to the winning party, while the agricultural Province of Pavia and Province of Mantua preferred the Italian Communist Party.

Background

For the first time the Italian Communist Party lost votes, after a period of terroristic attacks by the Red Brigades. Even the far-right Italian Social Movement was weakened. Between other minor parties, the Radical Party obtained its first seat.

Electoral system

The electoral system for the Senate was a strange hybrid which established a form of proportional representation into FPTP-like constituencies. A candidate needed a landslide victory of more than 65% of votes to obtain a direct mandate. All constituencies where this result was not reached entered into an at-large calculation based upon the D'Hondt method to distribute the seats between the parties, and candidates with the best percentages of suffrages inside their party list were elected.

Results

Party	votes	votes (%)	seats	swing
Christian Democracy	2,117,789	40.7	21	=
Italian Communist Party	1,530,781	29.4	15	1
Italian Socialist Party	620,900	11.9	6	=
Italian Democratic Socialist Party	217,704	4.2	2	1
Italian Social Movement	186,412	3.6	1	1
Italian Republican Party	162,090	3.1	1	=
Italian Liberal Party	156,745	3.0	1	=
Radical Party	154,257	3.0	1	1
Others	63,291	1.2	-	=
Total parties	5,209,969	100.0	48	=

Sources: Italian Ministry of the Interior

Notes