Südtiroler Gemeinderatswahlen 2020 – Eine Wahl in Zeiten von Covid-19

During the 2020 South Tyrolean municipal election that was postponed due to Covid-19-crisis, 113 municipal councils were up for election – parallel to the Italian confirming constitutional referendum. One of the peculiarities of this local council election was its election campaign: It was atypically short without any major capital investments in most municipalities. Possible reasons for this might be the election date (it was set close to the holiday season), the lack of political competition and the Covid-19-situation. The result itself was not groundbreaking, even if some surprise winners occurred. The SVP was still able to live up to its claim of being the mayoral party with 101 mandates in the 116 municipalities in 2020. It was particularly surprising that 10 incumbent mayors were voted out of office and 4 new mayors were younger than 35. For the first time in the last 25 years, there was a slowdown in the voter turnout reduction trend. This was underpinned by higher turnouts from large municipalities. However, it turned out that more than 80 municipalities experienced a renewed reduction. Especially in municipalities with low or even no political competition, the number of white/invalid votes and nonvoters increased. A rise in political competition could counteract this ongoing trend and avoid the accompanying threat of provisional administrations.