Challenges, crossroads and lucky charms: the first day at the polls
(Luca Gasperoni) Between superstitions, crossovers between challengers at the polls and sideshows, the first day of voting in Florence, for Europe but also for choose the future mayor and the neighborhood presidents. Six out of ten of the mayoral candidates showed up at the polls in the first three hours of opening to appeal to citizens to vote. The other four wait for Sunday. While the electoral machine of Palazzo Vecchio was trying to make up for the nine hundred withdrawals that arrived in the last few hours out of a total of 1,470 scrutineers needed, complete with an advance appeal to citizens in view of the possible runoff.
To inaugurate the first day of voting in Florence — today the polls are open from 7am to 11pm — he was the candidate of the Left Progetto Comune, Dmitrij Palagiat the Verdi school in San Iacopino, followed by the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renziwho reached the Villani primary school in Viale Giannotti in Gavinana just before 4pm, the same polling station as his former deputy mayor, outgoing mayor and current competitor for the European Parliament, Dario Nardella. Accompanying Renzi to the polling station – the deputy and squire Francesco Bonifazi had also passed there shortly before – was his wife Agnese and his daughter Ester who turned 18 just yesterdayvoting for the first time.
For his part, the outgoing mayor, who risked crossing paths with Renzi at 4pm, arrived half an hour later with his wife Chiara and his dog Ginger, a regular presence during the vote as lucky charmcomplete with an animal rights post on social media.
The two main aspirants to the Palazzo Vecchio seat also voted at the same time, Sara Funaro for the center-left ed Eike Schmidt for the centre-right. The councilor reached the polling station at the Castelnuovo high school in via della Colonna together with her partner Paolo and then she went to attend the 6pm mass in memory of Don Corso Guicciardini at the Madonnina del Grappa.
The former director of the Uffizi, however, accompanied by his wife Roberta, voted for the first time since he only acquired Italian citizenship last November, at the Machiavelli high school in Santo Spirito. In the same hours the candidate of Italia viva also voted, Stefania Saccardiat the Petrarca school on the Isolotto.
Closing was the democratic candidate of Florence, Cecilia Del Re, protagonist of a small detective story. The former councilor of the Nardella council, who left the Democratic Party by slamming the door, showed up at the Machiavelli school in Oltrarno at 6pm with a yellow flower – symbol of her list – pinned to her chest, together with her partner and her mother, but once she left From the voting booth he never found the card and the document, which by mistake ended up in the hands of another voter. It was the judicial police who tracked down the woman and recovered the documents which were then returned to Del Re.
 over Eike Schmidt (32.5-36.5%). Nardella elected in Europe, Renzi not. Meloni the most voted in Tuscany. At 2pm projections and data){kind=link}