1997 Rome mayoral election

16 November 1997
Turnout	74.1% 4.6 pp
Candidate Francesco Rutelli Pierluigi Borghini Party Greens National Alliance Alliance Centre-left Pole for Freedoms Popular vote 985,361 586,083 Percentage 60.4% 35.9%
Mayor before election Francesco Rutelli FdV Elected Mayor Francesco Rutelli FdV

Municipal elections were held in Rome on 16 November 1997 to elect the Mayor of Rome and 60 members of the City Council, as well as the nineteen presidents and more than 400 councillors of the 19 circoscrizioni in which the municipality was divided.

As a result, incumbent mayor Francesco Rutelli was re-elected for a second four-year term by a landslide.

Background

In the 1996 general elections the centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi performed strongly in nearly all the urban centers across Italy and especially in the city of Rome. Since that moment the political support to leftist parties in the Eternal City started to increase heavily, although the former-fascist National Alliance (AN) continued to maintain a huge number of supporters across the city.

During the previous years, the incumbent mayor Francesco Rutelli saw his personal popularity increase among Roman citizens.^[1] During his term in office he promoted some important architectural and urban projects to redevelop the city such as the approval of Parco della Musica concert hall designed by Renzo Piano in 1994^[2] and the urban plan called "Cento piazze" (literally "One hundred squares") in 1995, a project to renovate different squares and creating new pedestrian zones in many parts of the city, from the historical city center to the suburbs.^[3] Thanks to this plan many historical and tourist landmarks of Rome were renovated and pedestrianized such as Piazza di Spagna (1995) and Piazza del Popolo (1997).

As a part of his plan to renovate the city, in March 1995 Rutelli submitted an unsuccessful bid to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, which were ultimately awarded to Athens in September 1997.^[4]

Against the mayor, the centre-right Pole for Freedoms coalition initially seemed intentioned to propose the candidacy of the right-wing deputy Francesco Storace,^[5] but ultimately chose Pierluigi Borghini, a famous conservative businessman, in an attempt to gain more votes from independent and centrist voters.^[6]

Voting system

The voting system is used for all mayoral elections in Italy, in the city with a population higher than 15,000 inhabitants. Under this system voters express a direct choice for the mayor or an indirect choice voting for the party of the candidate's coalition. If no candidate receives 50% of votes, the top two candidates go to a second round after two weeks. This gives a result whereby the winning candidate may be able to claim majority support, although it is not guaranteed.

The election of the City Council is based on a direct choice for the candidate with a preference vote: the candidate with the majority of the preferences is elected. The number of the seats for each party is determined proportionally.

Parties and candidates

This is a list of the major parties (and their respective leaders) which participated in the election.

Results

Summary of the 1997 Rome City Council and Mayoral election results

Candidates		Votes	%	Leader's seat	Parties		Votes	%	Seats
	Francesco Rutelli	983,902	60.42	–		Democratic Party of the Left	281,832	21.98	15
						Communist Refoundation Party	112,628	8.78	6
						Rutelli List	89,790	7.00	5
						Federation of the Greens	83,321	6.50	4
						Italian People's Party	71,123	5.55	3
						Italian Renewal	29,387	2.29	1
						Pannella List	20,878	1.63	1
						Democratic Socialists	20,859	1.63	1
						Democratic Union	17,922	1.40	–
						Italian Republican Party	7,946	0.62	–
						Total	735,686	57.37	36
	Pierluigi Borghini	585,367	35.94	Y		National Alliance	308,745	24.08	14
						Forza Italia – United Christian Democrats	129,391	10.09	6
						Christian Democratic Centre – Pact for Rome	47,681	3.72	2
						Federalist Greens	5,846	0.46	–
						United Italy	3,528	0.28	–
						Total	495,191	38.62	22
	Pino Rauti	26,389	1.62	Y		Tricolour Flame	23,380	1.82	–
	Tiziana Parenti	12,586	0.77	–		Liberal Socialists	10,218	0.80
	Raffaele D'Ambrosio	7,988	0.49	–		Humanitas	9,101	0.71	–
	Sforza Ruspoli	5,965	0.37	–		Civic list	4,246	0.33	–
	Marina Larena	4,091	0.25	–		Humanist Party	2,687	0.21	–
	Giancarlo Cito	2,233	0.14	–		Southern Action League	1,751	0.14	–
Total		1,628,521	100.00	2			1,282,260	100.00	58
Eligible voters		2,301,277	100.00
Did not vote		596,246	25.91
Voted		1,705,031	74.09
Blank or invalid ballots		76,510	4.48
Total valid votes		1,628,521	95.52
Source: Ministry of the Interior

Circoscrizioni election

Since 1972 the city of Rome had been divided into 20 administrative areas, called circoscrizioni (reduced to 19 in 1992 after Fiumicino became an independent comune separated from Rome). In 1997 for the first time the presidents of each circoscrizione was directly elected by citizens. No second round was needed since the candidate who received the most votes was elected president.

Table below shows the results for each circoscrizione with the percentage for each coalition:

Source: Municipality of Rome - Electoral Service

References