Share of votes won by the Five-Star Movement 2013-2024

The Five-Star Movement (M5S) was founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo, as an anti-system and pro-direct democracy party, with a marked populist and anti-euro character. After being active only in local politics, in 2013 it firstly contested in a national election, collecting one fourth of the votes, representing the largest opposition force between 2013 and 2018. In the same year, the party collected more than 32 percent of the votes, which allowed M5S to form a government in a populist coalition with the League under the leadership of Giuseppe Conte. However, after the governing experience, the party suffered from a deep consensus crisis, and lost more than half of the votes in the 2022 general election.