ROME -- Italians will vote on Sunday in what is being billed as a crucial election as Europe reels from repercussions of Russia's war in Ukraine. For the first time in Italy since the end of World War II, the election could propel a far-right leader into the premiership.
Soaring energy costs and quickly climbing prices for staples like bread — the consequences of Russia's invasion of breadbasket Ukraine — have pummeled many Italian families and businesses.
Against that bleak backdrop, Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party — with neo-fascist roots and an agenda of God, homeland and Christian identity — appear to be the front-runners in Italy's parliamentary election.
They could be a test case for whether hard-right sentiment is gaining more traction in the 27-nation European Union. Recently, a right-wing party in Sweden surged in popularity by capitalizing on peoples' fears about crime.
Meloni's main alliance partner is right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, who blames crime on migrants. Salvini has long been a staunch ideological booster of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland.
"Elections in the middle of a war, in the midst of an energy crisis and the dawn of what is likely to be an economic crisis ... almost by definition are crucial elections,'' said Nathalie Tocci, director of Rome-based think tank the International Affairs Institute.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, is gambling that “Europe will break” under the weight of economic and energy problems brought on by the war, Tocci told The Associated Press.
Salvini, who draws his voter base from business owners in Italy's north, has donned pro-Putin T-shirts in the past. Salvini has also questioned the wisdom of maintaining Western economic sanctions against Russia, saying they could hurt Italy's economic interests too much.
The publication of polls was halted 15 days before Sunday's vote, but before then they indicated Meloni’s party would be the biggest vote-getter, just ahead of the center-left Democratic Party headed by former Premier Enrico Letta.
A campaign alliance linking Meloni to conservative allies Salvini and former Premier Silvio Berlusconi confers a clear advantage over Letta under Italy's complex system of divvying up seats in Parliament.
Letta had hoped in vain for a campaign alliance with the left-leaning populist 5-Star Movement, the largest party in the outgoing legislature.
While it is a fraught moment for Europe, Sunday's election could see modern Italy's lowest-ever turnout. The last election, in 2018, saw record-low turnout of 73%. Pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco says this time the percentage could drop to as low as 66%.
Pregliasco, who heads the YouTrend polling company, says Italy's last three different governing coalitions have left Italians “disaffected, disappointed. They don't see their vote as something that matters.”