The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, was going through a moment of excellent electoral form.
Her polls did not stop smiling at her, she won the local elections with little effort and the European elections next June appeared in the distance like a golden horizon.
Two weeks ago, however, she frowned.
The region of Sardinia, where she had handpicked a candidate who did not have the support of her coalition partners (Forza Italia and Liga), passed into the hands of the left.
The unexpected defeat served to give wings to the new alliance between the Democratic Party (PD) and the 5 Star Movement.
And to show that the Prime Minister of Italy is not unbeatable.
“It wasn't my best day,” she had to admit the next night.
This Sunday, the Abruzzo region will definitely set the trend for the coming months.
Meloni, chastened by what happened in Sardinia, has taken this Sunday's elections very seriously.
On Tuesday she traveled to Pescara, the region's capital, to close one of the campaign rallies in person.
A region in central-eastern Italy with 1.3 million inhabitants.
The place may not seem relevant on the electoral political map, but it is one of the few territories where Brothers of Italy govern, which also has Marco Marsilio, a close friend of Meloni, as head of the regional Executive.
The latest internal polls conducted by the parties indicate that the right-wing candidate should win.
The figures, however, are very tight and the coalition of Meloni and Matteo Salvini does not trust it.
In Sardinia, League sources point out, the polls were wrong.
“That, clearly, was not our mistake.
The candidate that Salvini had proposed was not the one who lost,” says a deputy.
The leader of the Brothers of Italy managed communication well after the defeat in Sardinia and managed to divert attention to other internal issues.
But, beyond the trend that would now mark a new setback in Abruzzo, a failure would further open the wound between her and her partner Matteo Salvini, whose electorate functions as a communicating vessel with Meloni's.
The leader of the League has been tightening the rope for weeks to highlight the errors of his ally in the past elections.
No one doubts that a defeat now would increase the tension between the two, necessary to reach the European elections with their own profile that allows them to compete.
In fact, Salvini and Meloni belong to the two large radical right groups in the Strasbourg Parliament.
The prime minister is the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, while the leader of the League is part of Identity and Democracy (ID), the same political container in which Alternative for Germany (AfD) or National Regroupment (RN), Marine Le Pen's party.
The problem for Meloni now in Abruzzo will be abstention.
Or rather the vote that the left could recover if participation increases and a traditionally progressive electorate is mobilized.
And that the candidate has lost popularity.
Marsilio is Roman and does not even have a fixed residence in the region.
The current governor began his career from the embers of post-fascism of the Italian Social Movement, like Meloni herself, and today many see him as an amortized politician.
On that side he has attacked the leader of the PD, Ely Schlein, who has been careful in recent months to appear too much in the media and in electoral contests, but who has seen how these elections could change some political dynamics in Italy.
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