Italy’s Giorgia Meloni seems unstoppable: According to the latest polls, two weeks before the election she is heading for an overwhelming victory to lead the country’s first far-right government as the first woman prime minister.

The right-wing coalition, which includes Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, is forecast to win 46 percent of the vote.

The left, led by the Democratic Party (PD), aims to win 28.5 percent, while the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) could reach 13 percent ahead of an election embargo, according to a YouTrend poll.

In a surprise move this week, PD leader Enrico Letta admitted defeat but urged undecided voters to vote for his party or risk giving the right the landslide victory that would allow it to change the constitution.

“I will vote for Meloni,” lawyer Bernardo, 55, who declined to give his last name, told AFP, saying he wanted “to teach the PD a lesson” for a negative campaign based on “hatred of others.” base”.

The snap elections were called after Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned in July after three parties in his coalition lost support and plunged Italy into uncertainty as it faced inflation and a record drought.

The right-wing coalition has promised extremely expensive solutions to the energy and livelihood crises in the eurozone’s third-largest economy – without explaining how they will be paid for.

The EU has provided almost €200 billion in post-pandemic recovery funds to Italy, which has the second-highest public debt in the eurozone.

Meloni, 45, who has maintained a straight-forward, tough personality, said she will renegotiate that deal, which is conditional on Italy enacting a series of reforms.

The left coalition insists the money is at stake should the right win.

In the 2018 election, the Brothers of Italy secured just over four percent of the vote but are now at 24 percent, despite being a political descendant of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), led by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II Founded.

Meloni has wooed Italians with their motto “God, country and family” and stole the support of the once popular Salvini, who analysts say sealed his own political fate by botching a power grab in 2019.

She has promised to cut taxes and bureaucracy, increase defense spending, close Italy’s borders to protect the country from “Islamization”, renegotiate European treaties to return more power to Rome, and “LGBT lobbies” to fight.

A right-wing victory would pose a “great risk” for the EU, Letta told AFP in August, as “there has never been a major European country governed by political forces so clearly opposed to the idea of ??a European community”.

The right suffers deep divisions over the Russian invasion, with Meloni backing arms shipments to Ukraine while Salvini – a longtime admirer of President Vladimir Putin – opposes sanctions.

The left wants to pick up where the pro-European Draghi left off.

But his call for continuity is less convincing to impoverished, anxious voters in debt-ridden Italy than a promise of change, analysts say.

There is “still room for surprises,” Italian political theorist Nadia Urbinati told the Domani newspaper on Thursday, especially considering that around 20 percent of eligible voters are still undecided, polls show.