Pier Luigi Bersani is in pole position to become Italy's next leader after winning a centre left primary vote, but the former communist must now convince nervous markets and conservative voters he won't drag the country too far to the left.
Bersani, 61, crushed a challenge from Matteo Renzi, the youthful mayor of Florence, in a run off primary electionyesterday to choose the centre-left candidate for a national vote next spring. He won more than 60 percent to Renzi's 39 percent, taking every region except the challenger's Tuscan home turf.
Bersani is often portrayed as a colourless career apparatchik, but his insistence on holding elections on the centre-left against opposition inside his Democratic Party (PD) was a masterstroke.
It left him as unchallenged leader of the notoriously factionalised centre-left, which itself emerged reunited from a vote that garnered extremely valuable public exposure.
Some three million voters participated in the second round and nearly four million in the first.
Debates between the candidates attracted record television ratings and reignited public interest in the traditional political system, which is under serious threat from the populist 5-Star...
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