General elections were held in Italy on June 20, 1976. They were the first after the voting age was lowered to 18. If Christian Democracy remained stable with around 38% of votes, Enrico Berlinguer's Italian Communist Party made a great jump winning 7 points more than four years before: this result, which was quite homogeneous in the entire society because confirmed by the electors of the age-restricted Senate, began to show the possibility of a future change of the Italian government leadership. All minor parties lost a lot of votes to the DC in the attempt to fight the Communist progress: between them, historic Italian Liberal Party was nearly annihilated. Two new leftist forces made their debut in this election: the ultra-liberal Radical Party, which had led a successful referendum on d