Mayor of Venice
The mayor of Venice (Italian: "sindaco di Venezia") is an elected politician who, along with the Venice City Council of 36 members, is accountable for the strategic government of the municipality of Venice, Veneto, Italy. The current office holder is Luigi Brugnaro, a centre-right wing independent businessman who has been in charge since 2015. The last election took place in 2020. Overview. According to the Italian Constitution, the Mayor of Venice is member of the Venice's City Council. Although the title Mayor is not held by the heads of the six boroughs of Venice, because  they do not actually preside over self-governmental municipalities. The Mayor is elected by the population of Venice. Citizens elect also the members of the City Council, which also controls Mayor's policy guidelines and is able to enforce his resignation by a motion of no confidence. The Mayor is entitled to appoint and release the members of his government. Since 1993 the Mayor is elected directly by Venice's electorate: in all mayoral elections in Italy in cities with a population higher than 15,000 the voters express a direct choice for the mayor or an indirect choice voting for  the party of the candidate's coalition. If no candidate receives at least 50% of votes, the top two candidates go to a second round after two weeks. The election of the City Council is based on a direct choice for the candidate with a preference vote: the candidate with the majority of the preferences is elected. The number of the seats for each party is determined proportionally. The seat of the City Council is the city hall "Ca' Loredan" on the Canal Grande. List of mayors of Venice. Podestà (1806–1866). "Podestà" of Venice were appointed since 1806 to 1866  by the rulers of the city during the early- to mid-19th century: Napoleon and the Habsburgs. Kingdom of Italy (1866–1946). In 1860, the nascent Kingdom of Italy created the office of the Mayor of Venice ("Sindaco di Venezia"), chosen by the City council: Republic of Italy (since 1946). City Council election (1946–1993). From 1946 to 1993, the Mayor of Venice was chosen by the City Council: Direct election (since 1993). Since 1993, under provisions of new local administration law, the Mayor of Venice is chosen by direct election, originally every four, and later every five years: Elections. City Council elections , 1946–1990. Number of votes for each party: Number of seats in the City Council for each party: Mayoral and City Council election, 1993. The election took place in two rounds: the first on 21 November and the second on 5 December 1993. For the first time under the new electoral law citizens could vote directly the mayor; before this choice was made by the City Council. For the first time a center-left coalition, composed by the former communist Democratic Party of the Left and some other progressives party (such as the new-born Federation of the Greens and the  Communist Refoundation Party), presented its candidate: Massimo Cacciari. He was an independent venetian philosopher, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party. The main opposition to Cacciari's coalition was represented by Aldo Mariconda. Mariconda was a businessman and member of the regionalist Lega Nord-Liga Veneta, which combined Venetian nationalism and a strong support for fiscal federalism. Liga Veneta, as regional faction of the national Lega Nord party, had a liberal, centrist and economically libertarian outfit due to the political upbringing of its early leaders and a more conservative electoral base. Despite the strong performance of Mariconda  on the first round, Cacciari managed to win the election on the second round gaining the support of the moderate and centrist voters of the agonizing Christian Democracy party. On 5 December 1993 Cacciari won the election and became the first directly-elected mayor of Venice. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! | Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 1997. The election took place on 16 November 1997. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! | Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 2000. The election took place in two rounds: the first on 16 April and the second on  30 April 2000. The snap election was held in April 2000 after the incumbent mayor Massimo Cacciari resigned in January to run as the main center-left candidate for the regional elections. While on the first round about 72% of the venetian voters went to the polls, thanks to the fact that the election took place the same day of the regional elections, on the second round the turnout was extremely low, probably because the election occurred on the first Sunday after Easter, immediately before the International Workers' Day, and most of voters were outside Venice. The main candidates were  Paolo Costa, a member of the center-left Italian People's Party and former Minister of Public Works (1996–1998), and Renato Brunetta, a center-right venetian MEP. Gianfranco Bettin, a notorious environmental activist, run as the main candidate of a leftist coalition. For the first time the regionalist Lega Nord party decided to not present its own mayoral candidate and to be a part of the center-right alliance. In the first round of the election, Brunetta got 39% of the votes and Costa 38%. Then on the second round Bettin, who got 16% of the votes on the first  round, decided to officially sustain Costa and signed a pre-electoral alliance with him just a week before the run-off. On 30 April Costa easily defeated Brunetta and, since on the first round no coalition obtained more than the 50% of the votes, the majority bonus granted by the electoral law was given to the center-left coalition and its fresh leftist allies despite the center-right had received more votes. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! | Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 2005. The election took place on two rounds: the first on 3–4 April, the  second on 17–18 April 2005. The candidates were in total eleven, some supported by independent lists. The main candidates were: the philosopher and former mayor Massimo Cacciari, who were supported by the center-left moderate party The Daisy; the magistrate Felice Casson, who was supported by a broad center-left coalition; and the businessman Cesare Campa, who was supported by a center-right alliance between Forza Italia and Union of Christian and Centre Democrats. Differently from the precedent election, both the main coalitions were completely divided: the former center-right coalition was now fragmented between three different candidates, while the  center-left was broken in two part, one moderate and one radical. After a hard battle, Massimo Cacciari was able to obtain 23% of the votes, overtaking Campa in order to participate in the run-off election with Casson. Despite the first round result, after a shocking vote counting, Casson was narrowly defeated by Cacciari who probably gained the support of the center-right voters. Two years later, however, when Democrats of the Left and The Daisy merged into the Democratic Party, Cacciari had a majority even greater in the City Council. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! |  Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 2010. The election took place on 28–29 March 2010. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! | Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 2015. These elections were held on two rounds: the first on 31 May the second on 14 June 2015. These elections occurred after a year during which the city were governed by a "special commissioner" after the incumbent mayor Giorgio Orsoni resigned in June 2014 amid a wider investigation into alleged corruption over new flood barriers MOSE Project. The official candidate of the center-left coalition was the left-wing magistrate  and senator Felice Casson, who failed to win the election in 2005. Cause of his opposition to Matteo Renzi's political line, Casson was generally considered as a representative of the extreme left parties, and based his campaign on the break with the old and corrupted politicians who were investigated the past year. The main opposition to Casson's coalition was the center-right independent Luigi Brugnaro, a businessman and president of the Reyer Venezia Mestre basketball club. Brugnaro was sustained by a coalition between Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the conservative Popular Area alliance. Although Casson was ahead  after the first round, on 14 June Brugnaro won the election and became the first directly-elected conservative mayor of the city. However, the victory of Brugnaro occurred thanks to his great popularity across the city: his own independent list resulted the first party and gained 17 of 36 seats in the City Council, while Forza Italia and Popular Area obtained together no more than 5% of the votes. After the election, Brugnaro said he considered himself as an independent, totally free from parties' influence, and a supporter of Matteo Renzi's policy. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! |  % ! | Seats Mayoral and City Council election, 2020. These elections were scheduled to take place on 31 May 2020 but then were postponed to 20–21 September 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. ! | Parties and coalitions ! | Votes ! | % ! | Seats