The red and the black: neo-fascist inheritance in the electoral success of the Lega in Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche

In 2018 Italian general elections, the Lega has dramatically increased its consensus in the ‘red belt’, the central area of the country traditionally ruled by centre-left parties. Pundits have argued that this performance can be attributed to the new leadership of Matteo Salvini, who changed the ideological location of the Lega by transforming it in a national right-wing party. This article hypothesizes that geographical trajectories of diffusion of the party are associated with the prevalence of a neo-fascist minority present in the ‘red belt’ during the First Republic. By employing official electoral results at the municipality level, the article analyses the relationship between the percentages of votes for the MSI in 1976 and the Lega in the 2006–2018 period in Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche. The neo-fascist inheritance results to be associated with the vote for the Lega only in 2018, after the change in the political discourse and leadership of the party.