'Some 50 million Italians are eligible to vote in this election'
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00:00 Exactly, I mean the voting already began on Saturday afternoon and will continue today
00:06 all the way till 11pm local time when many EU elections around the Union would have already
00:13 wrapped up.
00:14 So it's a long day of voting ahead and what we do know is some 50 million Italians are
00:19 eligible to vote in this election, in this the EU's third largest economy.
00:25 And Italy has 76 out of the 720 seats in the Parliament so it could play a crucial role
00:33 in deciding the balance of power in the Union.
00:37 Now in terms of turnout so far what we've seen on Saturday is that turnout was lower
00:43 as compared to the last European Parliamentary elections back in 2019.
00:48 We'll have to see what happens for the rest of the day on Sunday.
00:52 For the moment though the weather is not as sunny as it was yesterday so perhaps we could
00:57 see more people deciding instead to come out to vote instead of perhaps taking a trip out
01:02 of town.
01:03 Clearly, voter turnout is going to be an issue.
01:07 It's not exactly the perfect comparison but if you compare the last national elections
01:12 it saw the lowest turnout ever in terms of deciding to participate in the voting process
01:19 and that is significant for a country like Italy where voting is generally part of the
01:25 culture of Italians.
01:27 And Sima let's talk a little bit about the campaign itself leading up to the vote.
01:31 It was dominated by national issues.
01:34 Just talk to us about some of the main themes.
01:39 Well a lot of the parties seem to be focusing very much on those national issues.
01:43 Things like health care really was a hot button topic as well as taxation.
01:49 So different national issues is what they were hoping to perhaps I guess appeal to the
01:55 voters but what's interesting to note in the Italian context is that currently in government
02:00 you have a right-wing coalition government of three different right-wing parties and
02:06 each of these parties belong to three different blocs at the European level in terms of their
02:12 different blocs in the European Parliament.
02:15 So while they may be united in terms of at the national level when it came to campaigning
02:20 we did see some divisions of course within these three different right-wing parties in
02:26 government so really something interesting there but of course we'll have to see what
02:30 comes out of the turnout today at the end of this long day of voting ahead for Italians
02:36 as they make their way to the polls here in Rome and throughout the country and in fact
02:40 what's also happening at the same time is some 3,700 town councils are also carrying
02:46 out elections and one region, the region of Piedmont up in the northern Italy is also
02:52 having its regional elections.