Digital storytelling
June 2nd, 1946
Republic 12,718,641, 54.27%; Monarchy 10,718,502, 45.73%.
These are the results of the institutional referendum which was held, together with the elections for the Constituent Assembly, on June 2, 1946.
Elections that saw Christian Democracy as the first party with 8,101,004 votes equal to 35.21% and 207 elected. Second was the PSIUP with 4,758,129 votes equal to 20.68% with 115 deputies and third the PCI with 4.356.686 suffrages, equal to 18.93% and 104 parliamentarians.
With this digital path, the Luigi Sturzo Institute intends to propose, through a selection from its archival and bibliographic material, an in-depth analysis of the institutional referendum and the election day of June 2, the first universal suffrage that he saw, for the first time in our country, the participation of women in the vote.
The selected materials, including articles from the newspaper “Il Popolo”, party posters, essays by Luigi Sturzo, documents and manuscripts from the Giulio Andreotti Archive, as well as a brief testimony by Prof. Nicola Antonetti, want to highlight, in addition to a general assessment, the way in which to which the referendum event was remembered and promoted also in the following years, by the DC, which played a fundamental role, even among internal contradictions, in the victory of the Republic.
That memory, made history, contributed to the institutional and social construction of freedom and the Republic in the living fabric of the country.