"I CAN'T believe it.” That, according to the newspaper Corriere Della Serra, was how Matteo Salvini (pictured), the leader of the right-wing Northern League party, responded on November 23rd to his party's remarkable showing in a regional election in the north-central region of Emilia-Romagna. The governorship went to the candidate put up by the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) of the prime minister, Matteo Renzi. That was to be expected; Emilia-Romagna is traditionally the most left-wing area in Italy. But the real surprise was on the right. Mr Salvini had said during the campaign that he would be delighted with a single vote more than Forza Italia, the pre-eminent party of the Italian right. In the event, the League won 132,961 more, finishing with 19% of the vote—more than double Forza Italia’s miserable 8%. The win was a tribute to the effectiveness of the League's old-fashioned, boots-on-the-doorstep campaigning. But it was above all a triumph for Mr Salvini, who took over the leadership of the Northern League last December. It raises the prospect that leadership of Italy's political right may be passing from Forza Italia's leader—Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister—to Mr Salvini, who would take it in a very different direction.

Since taking over the Northern League, Mr Salvini has wrenched it to the right. He has focused his rhetoric on unauthorised immigration (which he wants made illegal again), the Roma (“the cause of many problems”), and the euro (which he wants Italy to leave). It is uncompromising stuff, closer in tone to the pronouncements of the National Front in France than to those of UKIP in Britain. And it is finding a ready audience in a country still languishing in its longest-ever recession, even in areas like Emilia-Romagna, which some in the League think does not belong culturally or even geographically in the north.

The remarkable showing of the Northern League candidate, Alan Fabbri, owed much to low turnout. Only 38% of the electorate bothered to go to the polls, in a region where 68% voted at the last regional election in 2010. That spoke to Italy's widespread disillusionment with traditional politics and parties. The malaise was exacerbated in Emilia-Romagna by a corruption scandal: the outgoing governor resigned in June after being convicted of fraud. In the other region where polls were held November 23rd, southern Calabria (the "toe" of Italy's boot), abstention rates were similarly high. There too, scandal had engulfed the previous administration.

Mr Renzi shrugged off the low turnout, preferring to dwell on the fact that the left won both polls. But particularly in leftist Emilia-Romagna, the high abstention rate carried a troubling message for the government: while delighting middle-class voters with his business-friendly policies, Mr Renzi risks losing the PD’s traditional voter base.

It is on the right, however, that the reverberations are largest. Mr Salvini’s robust conservatism is strikingly at odds with the stance adopted by Mr Berlusconi. The media tycoon has been a self-proclaimed admirer of Mr Renzi since before he came into office, and agreed earlier this year to back the prime minister’s ambitious plans for a reform of the constitution and the electoral law. Though his family’s newspaper, Il Giornale, is critical of the government, Mr Berlusconi himself is seldom more than gently disapproving. Many, on the right and left alike, suspect he believes that his own interests and those of his businesses are best served by cosying up to the government, and that he is putting them ahead of his party’s.

Discontent within Forza Italia has been growing for months now. Privately, and occasionally even publicly, critics have pressed Mr Berlusconi towards a more vigorous style of opposition. One of their arguments has been that the accommodation with Mr Renzi widens the opportunities for a populist and increasingly euro-sceptical Northern League. They see the result in Emilia-Romagna as proving their point. Within hours of the result, the website of one right-wing daily was running an online poll. The question was: “In your opinion, should Berlusconi give the leadership of the centre-right to Salvini?”