1995 Italian local elections

The 1995 Italian local elections were held on 23 April and 7 May, 19 November and 3 December.^[1]

The elections were strongly won by the new centre-left coalition between the Democratic Party of the Left, led by Massimo D'Alema and the Italian People's Party, heirs of the Christian Democracy party.

The election saw a large defeat of the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-right coalition, who had won the general election in the previous year.

The voting system is used for all mayoral elections in Italy in the cities with a population higher than 15,000 inhabitants. 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 50% of votes during the first round, the top two candidates go to a second round after two weeks. The winning candidate obtains a majority bonus equal to 60% of seats. 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 maximum of one preferential vote: the candidate with the majority of the preferences is elected. The number of the seats for each party is determined proportionally, using D'Hondt seat allocation. Only coalitions with more than 3% of votes are eligible to get any seats.^[2]