A coffee with Matteo Salvini. This is the event that inaugurates the last week of the electoral campaign in Ponsacco. A meeting with the leader of the League and transport minister of the Meloni government is scheduled for this morning, Monday 17 June. The appointment is at Nina’s pastry shop, on Viale Italia, at 10.30. After months of discussion and clashes on local and citizen issues, the big names in national politics are now taking to the field to try to get ahead of the run-off elections on Sunday and Monday. Once the question of affiliations is over, yesterday was in fact the last day to formalize the alliances, the countdown intensifies. The national leader of the Carroccio is in support of the centre-right candidate Gabriele Gasperini.
The objective is to fill the gap in votes that separates Gasperini’s coalition (made up of Lega, Forza Italia, Fratelli d’Italia and the Ponsacco Sicura list) with that of the centre-left challenger Fabrizio Lupi (supported by the Democratic Party, Ponsacco in Movimento and Italia Viva) which obtained over 40%, 3129 votes, in the first round. A distance of 10 percentage points which translates into 758 votes. It will be crucial to understand how the voters of the three lists of the civic center who had supported the candidacy of Federico D’Anniballe as the next mayor of Ponsacco (2163 votes in total) will express themselves. Calculations which became extremely complicated following the split between the parties with Samuele Ferretti (his list obtained 770 votes in the first round while he obtained over 300 preferences, ed.) who was pushing for an official or unofficial agreement which on the day of on Saturday he publicly expressed his willingness to support Gasperini. On the other hand there is D’Anniballe who has renounced the alliance but continues to call for change for Ponsacco’s next leadership. The third list of the civic center, the one linked to the figure of Maurizio Bernacchi (who obtained 330 votes) did not express itself either in one direction or the other. A fiery climate where every vote can shift the balance. To win, Lupi will have to confirm his hoard of voters and try to widen the gap that has been created within the civic center to grab some of their votes. Gasperini, on the other hand, will have to be able to embody the change while remaining within the group of parties that supported him.
