Abstract
The article describes the primaries held by the Italian centre left in 2012 to choose its candidate for the premiership. After a short history of previous primaries and ‘pseudo’-primaries (national contests to choose the party secretary) held by the centre left (or by its main party), the article deals with the internal debate about whether or not to hold primaries and about the rules that would govern them. The article proposes looking at this debate in a ‘realistic’ way, as a struggle between political actors fighting to conquer or maintain power. The third section analyses the results. The data presented show a large increase in turnout in the North and in the ‘Red Belt’ and a decrease in the South. The article sketches some hypotheses to explain these variations, discussing in particular the relevance of social capital. The conclusions consider the contest as a temporary success for the centre left: it attracted great media attention and had a conditioning effect on voter intentions, but did not lead to the definitive institutionalisation of primaries.
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