Italians in Milan, Naples and other cities go to the polls this weekend for a second round of local elections. Two weeks ago, center-left candidates in two major Italian cities garnered the highest number of votes – but not enough to win a majority.

Observers say the political future of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been engulfed in a series of sex scandals and is also on trial for corruption, hinges on the outcome of this weekend's polls.

Berlusconi, meanwhile, is on the election war path and he isn't pulling any punches.

On state-run national television this week he said the only way the center-left in Milan - a traditional Berlusconi stronghold - and in Naples could win the mayoral elections is if voters left their brains at home.

He also warned voters in the northern city of Milan that their city would turn into a “Gypsytown” if his candidate Letizia Moratti were to be defeated.

Racist rhetoric

Berlusconi is trying whip up fear among voters and also please his anti-immigration Northern League coalition partner whose support has kept the prime minister's party in power.

But Italian political science professor Giovanni Orsina told Deutsche Welle that based on polls that show the once long-shot center-left candidate in the lead, Milan voters seem ready to take a risk on someone new.

"Quite clearly some voters are saying we are ready for a leap in the dark, we don't want you any longer," he said.

In Arcore, the town just outside of Milan that has become infamous as the place Berlusconi held parties with prostitutes and underage women, Berlusconi's center-right is trailing the new left-wing candidate, Rosalba Colombo.

Colombo said she was motivated to run in part to change the denigrating image of women associated with the town. Her right-wing opponents, she said, are using the same kind of scare tactics as in Berlusconi's hometown Milan. They have been handing out pamphlets saying she'll construct a mosque in the town – a scenario she called "ridiculous."

A test of the government's popularity

In the southern port city of Naples, polls show the center-right candidate still hasn't managed to take the lead even after years of ineffective center-left leadership that failed to resolve the city's garbage crisis.

Center-left candidate and former prosecutor Luigi de Magistris came in second during the first round of voting - he could win the next round.

The two camps have resorted to desperate measures to win voters, according to political analyst Wolf Achtner.

"In Naples, both sides give every family that promises to give them the vote a bag of groceries," he told Deutsche Welle. "We've gone back to 1950s tactics."

Results of the elections will be announced late Monday.

Author: Megan Williams
Editor: Kyle James