1987 Italian Senate election in Lombardy

June 14, 1987
All 48 Lombard seats to the Italian Senate
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Ciriaco De Mita Alessandro Natta Bettino Craxi Party DC PCI PSI Last election 34.4%, 17 seats 28.5%, 15 seats 12.1%, 6 seats Seats won 18 12 8 Seat change 1 3 2 Popular vote 1,845,626 1,319,356 901,296 Percentage 34.4% 24.6% 16.8% Swing = 3.9% 4.7%
Old local plurality before election DC New local plurality DC

Lombardy elected its tenth delegation to the Italian Senate on June 14, 1987. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 1987 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

Bettino Craxi's Italian Socialist Party reduced its gap with the Italian Communist Party after Enrico Berlinguer's death. Later after the USSR end the PCI lost his leftist wing, including senators Armando Cossutta and Luigi Meriggi, which created the Communist Refoundation Party. Many minor parties obtained a seat: between them, for the first time, Umberto Bossi's Lega Lombarda (Lega Nord since 1991).

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	1,845,626	34.4	18	1
Italian Communist Party	1,319,356	24.6	12	3
Italian Socialist Party	901,296	16.8	8	2
Italian Social Movement	249,470	4.7	2	=
Italian Republican Party	217,157	4.1	2	1
Federation of Green Lists	139,573	2.6	1	1
Lega Lombarda	137,276	2.6	1	1
Radical Party	133,181	2.5	1	=
Italian Democratic Socialist Party	127,828	2.4	1	1
Italian Liberal Party	124,418	2.3	1	1
Proletarian Democracy	108,990	2.0	1	1
Others	56,617	1.1	-	=
Total parties	5,360,788	100.0	48	=

Sources: Italian Ministry of the Interior

Notes