Snap Italian elections in 2018 unlikely following weekend vote

Italy's 5Star Movement, the populist challenger to the country's established parties, suffered a shocking defeat on Sunday, lowering the risk of snap elections being called in 2017, according to analysts.

Candidates from the party founded by Beppe Grillo failed to make it to the run-off mayoral vote in any of the main contested cities at the weekend.

Elections were held on Saturday in around 1,000 towns and small cities across Italy.

Yet the movement only managed to attain 20% of the vote or less in most of the main cities, which stood in stark contrast to the strong victories scored in Rome and Turin in May last year.

Even in Grillo's hometown of Genoa Luca Pirondini, the 5Stars candidate, only secured 18% of the vote, lagging behind his centre-right and centre left rivals.

The results were a major relief for the ruling centre-left Democratic party (PD) led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, with which the 5SM was tied neck-and-neck at about 30% in national polls.

Following Saturday's ballot, the PD now undoubtedly qualified for the June 25 runoffs in most of the largest cities.

Lorenzo Guerini, coordinator of the PD's leadership declared the results "encouraging".

Nevertheless, Barclays Research did not expect the traditional parties would be enticed into calling snap elections on the back of the vote.

"Compared with local ballots held last year, which delivered very strong results for the movement as it managed to secure critical cities such as Rome and Turin, municipalities contested this time were smaller and less systematic at national level," the analysts said.

The 5Star Movement's popularity may have peaked, but it was not expected to ease in the foreseeable future, the broker explained.

Hence, the most likely scenario continued to be that general elections would wait until the end of the first quarter of 2018 at the earliest.

That would also allow time for passage of a new electoral law which would help to avoid the risk of a hung parliament, Barclays said.