Va' pensiero Padania

Va' pensiero Padania was a Northern-Italian electoral list for the 2001 general election.

In 2000 Lega Nord signed a coalition pact with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. The Va' pensiero^[1] list was designed to attract the disgruntled voters of Lega Nord in some key Senate constituencies that were not given to the party and in which the centre-left was not competitive, in order to have one more elect to the Senate.^[2]

Most candidates of Va' pensiero were members of the League, such as incumbent senator Giuseppe Leoni, who stood in Varese.^[3] Another leading member and future leader of Lega Padana Lombardia, Roberto Bernardelli, was to stand as candidate in opposition to Marcello Dell'Utri in a constituency in Milano, but later backtracked.^[4]

The list gained 1.6% of the vote in Veneto, 0.8% in Lombardy and 1.1% Piedmont, doing particularly well in the constituencies of Vittorio Veneto (5.0%), Conegliano (4.5%), Varese (3.9%), Biella (4.0%) and Cuneo (4.1%).^[5] The list however failed its scope as Liga Fronte Veneto (4.9% in Veneto^[6]) and Lega Autonomia Lombarda (5.4% in Lombardy^[7]), two spin-offs of Lega Nord, attracted the vote of most Lega Nord dissidents and also of many voters who confused them with the mother party.

References