1953 Italian Senate election in Lombardy

June 7, 1953

All 31 Lombard seats to the Italian Senate
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Alcide De Gasperi Palmiro Togliatti Pietro Nenni
Party DC PCI PSI
Last election 53.8%, 18 seats 16.9%, 5 seats
as ½ of the FDP
16.9%, 5 seats
as ½ the FDP
Seats won 16 6 6
Seat change Decrease2 Increase1 Increase1
Popular vote 1,739,691 678,804 648,787
Percentage 46.7% 18.2% 17.4%
Swing Decrease7.1% Increase1.3% Increase0,5%

Old local majority before election

DC

New local majority

DC

Lombardy elected its second delegation to the Italian Senate on June 7, 1953. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 1953 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. All Lombard provinces gave a majority or at least a plurality to the winning party.

Background

Alcide De Gasperi's Christian Democracy weakened in this election, after that the exceptional conditions of 1948 had expired. However, Lombardy remained a stronghold for the national leading party.

Communists and Socialists obtained more votes running divided than they did together five years before, absorbing most of the Republican electorate. Even if the Communists obtained some seats in the agricultural south, the Socialists remarked their strength in the Milanese industrial neighbourhood. The Italian Democratic Socialist Party obtained a seat in Milan, a city led by its mayor Virgilio Ferrari, while the rightist and anti-constitutional Italian Social Movement and the Monarchist National Party took away some Conservative votes from the Christian Democracy and obtained their first seats in the bourgeois centers of Milan and Como.

Electoral system

The electoral system introduced in 1948 for the newly elected 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 1,739,691 46.7 16 Decrease2
Italian Communist Party 678,804 18.2 6 Increase1
Italian Socialist Party 648,787 17.4 6 Increase1
Italian Democratic Socialist Party 215,196 5.8 1 =
Italian Social Movement 140,327 3.8 1 Increase1
Monarchist National Party 124,905 3.6 1 Increase1
Others & PRI 175,418 4.7 - Decrease2
Total parties 3,723,128 100.0 31 =

Sources: Italian Ministry of the Interior

Constituencies

Constituency Elected Party Votes % Others
1 Bergamo Cristoforo Pezzini Christian Democracy 61.8%
2 Clusone Pietro Bellora Christian Democracy 70.7%
3 Treviglio Daniele Turani Christian Democracy 63.4%
4 Brescia Angelo Buizza Christian Democracy 48.6%
5 Breno Angelo Cemmi Christian Democracy 64.1%
6 Chiari Pietro Cenini Christian Democracy 58.6%
7 Salò Francesco Zane Christian Democracy 54.0%
8 Como Attilio Terragni Monarchist National Party 6.8% Giuseppe Terragni (DC) 46.1%
9 Lecco Pietro Amigoni Christian Democracy 58.4%
10 Cantù Lorenzo Spallino Christian Democracy 56.3%
11 Cremona Antonio Banfi Italian Communist Party 25.6%
12 Crema Ennio Zelioli Christian Democracy 52.7%
13 Mantua Alceo Negri Italian Socialist Party 25.2% Clarenzo Menotti (PCI) 21.2%
14 Ostiglia Arturo Colombi
Rodolfo Morandi
Italian Communist Party
Italian Socialist Party
29.3%
27.1%
15 Milan 1 Mario Marina Italian Social Movement 8.6%
16 Milan 2 None elected
17 Milan 3 None elected
18 Milan 4 Emilio Canevari Italian Democratic Socialist Party 9.9%
19 Milan 5 None elected
20 Milan 6 Piero Montagnani
Francesco Mariani
Italian Communist Party
Italian Socialist Party
31.0%
22.5%
21 Abbiategrasso Giorgio Marzola Italian Socialist Party 21.7% Emanuele Samek Lodovici (DC) 46.0%
22 Rho Carlo Corti
Amilcare Locatelli
Christian Democracy
Italian Socialist Party
49.7%
19.7%
23 Monza Mario Longoni Christian Democracy 50.8%
24 Vimercate Cesare Merzagora
Giuseppe Roda
Christian Democracy (Indep.)
Italian Socialist Party
56.2%
19.2%
25 Lodi Gianmaria Cornaggia Christian Democracy 47.1%
26 Pavia Giovanni Farina Italian Communist Party 26.6%
27 Voghera Cesare Gavina Italian Communist Party 23.9% Enrico Gazzale (PNM) 6.6%
28 Vigevano Giuseppe Alberganti Italian Communist Party 34.1%
29 Sondrio Ezio Vanoni Christian Democracy 62.6%
30 Varese None elected
31 Busto Arsizio Natale Santero Christian Democracy 48.2% Mario Grampa (PSI) 19.1%
  • Senators with a direct mandate have bold percentages. Please remember that the electoral system was, in the other cases, a form of proportional representation and not a FPTP race: so candidates winning with a simple plurality could have (and usually had) a candidate (always a Christian democrat) with more votes in their constituency.

Substitutions

Notes

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