The conventional campaign of an extraordinary election.

While the prediction of an exceptional victory of populist forces was shared by analysts at the closing of the parliamentary term, and accordingly a harsh electoral competition was expected, albeit with the aura of uncertainty raised by the new electoral law (‘Rosatellum’), the actual campaign has not proved at all ‘exceptional’. The leaders, the issues and the media coverage were rather a follow-up of the 2013 campaign. That campaign was truly a departure from the campaigning patterns of previous Italian electoral contests, both those of the ‘majoritarian’ (‘Mattarellum’) years and of the ‘proportional’ (‘Porcellum’) ones. What has marked significantly the 2018 campaign has been instead the intensive use of the social media [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]