Italian General Election of 1948

The Christian Democrats won 48 percent, containing the Communists in the Cold War's first electoral battle.

Overview

The April 18, 1948 election, with Marshall Plan stakes and Soviet-backed communism on the ballot, became the Cold War's first great electoral confrontation. Alcide De Gasperi's Christian Democrats took 48.5 percent, a record under proportional rules, against the Popular Front's 31 percent, aided by US aid, letters from Italian Americans, and fears of civil war. Italy remained in the Western camp, joining NATO in 1949. The 1948 result locked in decades of Christian Democratic dominance and communist opposition, the longest such pattern in Western Europe.