Italian general elections, 1976

Italian general election, 1976

← 1972 20 June 1976 1979 →
All 630 seats in the Italian Chamber of Deputies 315 (of the 322) seats in the Italian Senate
Turnout	93.4%
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Benigno Zaccagnini Enrico Berlinguer Francesco De Martino Party Christian Democracy Communist Party Socialist Party Leader since 1975 1972 1963 Leader's seat XII - Eastern Emilia XX - Latium III - Milan Seats won 263 C / 135 S 227 C / 116 S 57 C / 29 S Seat change 3 C / 0 S 48 C / 22 S 8 C / 4 S Popular vote 14,218,298 C 12,227,353 S 12,622,728 C 10,637,772 S 3,542,998 C 3,208,164 S Percentage 38.7% (C) 38.8% (S) 34.4% (C) 33.8% (S) 9.6% (C) 10.2% (S) Swing 0% C 0.7% S 7.3% C 7.2% S 0.4% C 0.5% S
Election results maps for the Chamber of Deputies (on the left) and for the Senate (on the right). Light Blue denotes provinces with a Christian Democratic plurality, Red denotes those with a Communist plurality, Dark gray denotes those with a South Tyrolean People's Party plurality.
Prime Minister before election Aldo Moro Christian Democracy Elected Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti Christian Democracy

Aldo Moro
Christian Democracy

Giulio Andreotti
Christian Democracy

General elections were held in Italy on 20 June 1976, to select the Seventh Republican Parliament. They were the first after the voting age was lowered to 18.

If Christian Democracy remained stable with around 38% of votes, Enrico Berlinguer's Italian Communist Party made a great jump winning 7 points more than four years before: this result, which was quite homogeneous in the entire society because confirmed by the electors of the age-restricted Senate, began to show the possibility of a future change of the Italian government leadership. All minor parties lost a lot of votes to the DC in the attempt to fight the Communist progress: between them, historic Italian Liberal Party was nearly annihilated. Two new leftist forces made their debut in this election: the ultra-liberal Radical Party, which had led a successful referendum on divorce, and the far-left Marxist and Maoist Proletarian Democracy.

The pure party-list proportional representation had traditionally become the electoral system for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were united in 32 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. At constituency level, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats were transferred at national level, where they were divided using the Hare quota, and automatically distributed to best losers into the local lists.