Italy’s Five Star Movement faces setback in municipal elections

Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement looked set to suffer a severe setback in local elections on Sunday, failing to make the run-off vote in almost all the main cities up for grabs, early results and exit polls said.

If confirmed, the result could undermine the group's hopes of winning national elections, which must be held by May 2018, and suggest that it is losing steam.

Initial counts showed Five Star candidates coming third or fourth in Parma, Verona, Palermo, L'Aquila, Catanzaro, Lecce and Genoa, home of the movement's founder, Beppe Grillo.

Its movement to second-round vote on June 25 lied in the hands of the southern Italian city of Taranto, early results indicated.

Five Star, which has railed against traditional parties, called for a referendum on membership of the euro and questioned Italy’s presence in Nato, is neck-and-neck in opinion polls with the ruling centre-left Democratic party at national level.

The likely losses at a local level contrast with the mayoral races of June 2016, when the party’s candidates gained control of both Rome and Turin.

The Five Star Moved hoped to build on these successes but its rule in the capital has been mired in controversy, denting its image, and its grassroots operations elsewhere have been snarled by internal feuding.

Forza Italia, the centre-right party led by an alliance between Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister, and Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right Northern League, had most to cheer about, leading the field in Lecce, Verona, Padova and the northern port city of Genoa, which has been run by the left for the last 50 years.

The centre-left was ahead in L'Aquila, while its veteran candidate in the Sicilian capital Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, looked poised to be re-elected at the first round.