General elections were held in
Italy on 26 October 1913, with a second round of voting on 2 November.[1] The
Liberals (the former Ministeriali) narrowly retained an absolute majority in the
Chamber of Deputies, while the
Radical Party emerged as the largest opposition bloc. Both groupings did particularly well in
Southern Italy, while the
Italian Socialist Party gained eight seats and was the largest party in
Emilia-Romagna.[2] However, the election marked the beginning of the decline of Liberal establishment.
There were episodes of violence during the election.[3]
Background
The two historical parliamentary factions, the liberal and progressive
Left and the conservative and monarchist
Right, formed a single liberal and centrist group, known as
Liberal Union, under the leadership of
Giovanni Giolitti. This phenomenon, known in Italian as Trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism"—in a satirical newspaper, the PM was depicted as a
chameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until after
World War I. Two parliamentary factions alternated in government, one led by
Sidney Sonnino and the other, by far the larger of the two, by Giolitti. At that time the Liberals governed in alliance with the
Radicals, the
Democrats and, eventually, the
Reform Socialists.[4] This alliance governed against two smaller opposition:
The Clericals, composed by some
Vatican-oriented politicians,
The Extreme, formed by the
socialist faction which represented a real
left in a present-day concept.[4]
Electoral reform
Changes made in 1912 widened the voting franchise to include literate men aged 21, men who had served in the army or navy (regardless of whether they were 21 years old), and illiterate men over the age of 30.[3][5] This raised the number of eligible voters from 2,930,473 in
1909 to 8,443,205.[6] The electoral system remained single-member constituencies with two-round majority voting.[5]