# Italy's New Majority Bonus Is Law, and It Might Not Even Help the Government That Wrote It > The Chamber of Deputies passed Giorgia Meloni's electoral overhaul 227 to 164 on October 8, handing up to 70 bonus seats to any coalition that wins 42 percent of the vote. The opposition fought it block by block, and current polling suggests the rule could end up electing Meloni's rivals instead of her. - Source: Italian Insider - Canonical URL: https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-s-new-majority-bonus-is-law-and-it-might-not-even-help-the-government-that-wrote-it - Author: Italian Insider Staff - Section: Politics - Other edition: https://italianinsider.net/article/italy-s-new-majority-bonus-is-law-and-it-might-not-even-help-the-government-that-wrote-it - Published: 2026-10-11T23:04:40.901Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T23:04:40.901Z - Tags: Electoral reform, Giuseppe Conte, Matteo Renzi, Italian parliament --- Italy's Chamber of Deputies gave final approval on October 8 to the government's rewrite of the national electoral law, passing it 227 to 164 in a secret ballot after the Senate had already cleared its own version. The bill now goes into effect roughly a year before the country is next required to vote, and it changes a basic fact about how Italian elections work: a coalition no longer needs to win outright to govern outright. The mechanism is specific. Any party or coalition that takes at least 42 percent of the seats in both the Chamber and the Senate is topped up with bonus seats on top of what it earned at the ballot box, up to 70 extra in the 400 seat Chamber and up to 35 extra in the 200 seat Senate, enough to push its working majority to roughly 56 percent of each chamber. Miss that 42 percent bar in either chamber, and the bonus disappears entirely. Seats are then handed out in strict proportion to the vote, with no guaranteed majority for anyone. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni framed the result as an answer to a problem Italy has lived with since the war, built not for her coalition specifically but for whoever wins. The reform, she said after the vote, will promote the stability and parliamentary coherence of any government, regardless of its political color. The opposition heard a different argument in the same bill. Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte led floor opposition alongside the Democratic Party, while Italia Viva's Matteo Renzi accused the governing coalition of pushing the reform through out of fear of losing power rather than any commitment to stability. The most pointed protest came from outside the chamber entirely: More Europe leader Riccardo Magi went on a hunger strike over the bill, calling it anti-democratic. What the opposition's own numbers complicate is the idea that this was simply a power grab for Meloni. Polling at the time of the vote put her coalition at roughly 39 percent, short of the 42 percent threshold on its own, while a combined center-left opposition was tracking closer to 44 percent, within range of claiming the very bonus seats the government just wrote into law. A rule built to guarantee whoever wins a governing majority does not specify which side has to be the one that wins. Italy's current parliament must face voters again by December 22, 2027 at the latest, and some reporting on the vote already points to an election as early as next spring. Whichever coalition is ahead when that vote happens will be governing under the system the Chamber approved on October 8, built for stability in the abstract and tested, for the first time, by whoever actually wins. --- Originally published by Italian Insider. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-s-new-majority-bonus-is-law-and-it-might-not-even-help-the-government-that-wrote-it.