1994 Italian local elections

The 1994 Italian local elections were held on 12 June (with runoffs on 26 June) and 20 November (with runoffs on 4 December).^[1] For many cities, they were the first elections conducted after the introduction of the direct election of mayors and presidents of provinces in 1993.

These elections were heavily influenced by the results of the March general election, won by Silvio Berlusconi's Pole of Freedoms–Pole of Good Government alliance. In these elections for the first time the centre-right coalition ran at local level, managing to obtain a majority in several cities. In a small group of cities the centre-left coalition experimented for the first time the alliance between the post-communist Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and the christian democratic Italian People's Party (PPI).

The first round of June elections were held on the same day of the 1994 European Parliament election.

The semipresidential voting system was the one used for all mayoral elections in Italy of cities with a population higher than 15,000. Under this system voters express a direct choice for the mayor or an indirect choice voting for the party of the candidate's coalition. If no candidate receives at least 50% of votes, the top two candidates go to a run-off after two weeks. The winning candidate obtains a majority bonus equal to 60% of seats in the City Council. During the first round, if no candidate gets more than 50% of votes but a coalition of lists gets the majority of 50% of votes or if the mayor is elected in the first round but its coalition gets less than 40% of the valid votes, the majority bonus cannot be assigned to the coalition of the winning mayor candidate.

The election of the City Council is based on a direct choice for the candidate with a preference vote: the candidate with the majority of the preferences is elected. The number of the seats for each losing party is determined proportionally, using D'Hondt seat allocation. Only coalitions with more than 3% of votes are eligible to get any seats.