«Let's wait for the recount then see what to do, it seems to me that the gap is narrowing , things went less worse than they seemed». The Sardinia case reaches all the way to Canada. Because the words in quotation marks are from Giorgia Meloni and she pronounced them in Toronto, where the president of the Council of Ministers - and leader of the Brothers of Italy - is currently on an institutional mission, after visiting Joe Biden at the White House .
Confidence in the turnaround is therefore high: the centre-right which has nominated Paolo Truzzu has the hope of subverting the outcome that emerged from the first counting of the ballots after the polls closed on 25 February, which gave the Campo Largo candidate Alessandra the winner Todde, of approximately 2400 preferences.
Meloni's declaration, due to the time difference, comes at the end of a day, the sixth bordering on the surreal, during which the electoral commissions worked on verifying the ballots of 19 sections which were unable to provide an answer at the end of the work of the scrutineers. While the math doesn't even add up on what the number of votes is at the center of the dispute.
The squabble
In Cagliari there are just 57 contested ballots. This is stated on the Municipality's institutional website. The nulls 1012. Official data. Among the few who can be said to be certain these days. Because there are supposedly tons of numbers circulating. And it will happen until the Court of Appeal puts the final seal on the outcome and decides a winner.
Today a statement came from Todde's staff: "The right will never be able to overturn the result." Phrase accompanied by a series of numerical indications on the votes from the polling stations being verified. The point is that even the sections didn't add up.
So much so that in the afternoon the reply arrived from the opposite entourage, that of Truzzu: «We advise the Todde staff to stay calm because if the data is what they say they will win or, alternatively, someone else will win».
Quarrel over numbers
On the left they estimate an advantage of 1400 preferences, however reduced by over 1000 compared to the outcome considered positive on the night of February 26th.
From the centre-right they let it be known that the gap would instead have dropped to 800. Or even six hundred: it depends on who the interlocutor is. Furthermore, according to the coalition itself, the contested ballots would be several thousand throughout the island. Of course, even on that side they know that in any case they wouldn't all be in favor of Truzzu.
But given the narrowness of the gap with the president in pectore, Alessandra Todde, hope can never be considered the last thing to die as in this case. The center-right councilor candidates know something about this and, according to the current framework, they would be out of the via Roma chamber due to the lack of majority prize, which goes to the head of the coalition that received one vote more than the opponent. And apparently Giorgia Meloni is counting on it too.