Italy on track to elect first right-wing prime minister since World War II, first female to hold the office

Italy’s parliamentary election on Sunday is expected to make history as a right-wing candidate who campaigned on a nationalist platform is expected to become the country’s first female prime minister. 

Italians will head to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament and determine who will govern the country next. Polls forecast the country’s Brothers of Italy party will take 25% of the vote on Sunday, and elect party leader Giorgia Meloni as the country’s first female prime minister. 

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” Giorgia Meloni told supporters in central Rome at a now-viral rally moment in 2019, according to France 24. “No one will take that away from me.” 

The Brothers of Italy party is described as a conservative and right-wing populist political party that has seen a meteoric rise in popularity since 2018, when it just received 4% of the vote, Reuters reported. 

FROM FRINGE LEADER TO FRONT-RUNNER: ITALIANS SET TO ELECT FIRST FEMALE PRIME MINISTER

Political commentators have described the Brothers of Italy party as “neo-fascist,” and Meloni’s potential win would notch the country’s most right-wing government since World War II. 

Meloni has campaigned on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration by rolling out a blockade to patrol the Mediterranean, cutting taxes, and protecting traditional family values. 

She argues the European Union is too bureaucratic but has said she wouldn’t push for any “Italexit,” and depicts herself as a staunch backer of NATO. She rallies against what she calls LGBT “lobbies” and promotes a “Christian identity” in Europe.

“My greatest desire is to lift up, to lift our nation up again from decline,” Meloni,…