1979 Italian Senate election in Lombardy

For the first time the Italian Communist Party lost votes, after a period of terroristic attacks by the Red Brigades. Even the far-right Italian Social Movement was weakened. Between other minor parties, the Radical Party obtained its first seat.

The electoral system for the Senate was a strange hybrid which established a form of proportional representation into FPTP-like constituencies. A candidate needed a landslide victory of more than 65% of votes to obtain a direct mandate. All constituencies where this result was not reached entered into an at-large calculation based upon the D'Hondt method to distribute the seats between the parties, and candidates with the best percentages of suffrages inside their party list were elected.

Party	votes	votes (%)	seats	swing
Christian Democracy	2,117,789	40.7	21	=
Italian Communist Party	1,530,781	29.4	15	1
Italian Socialist Party	620,900	11.9	6	=
Italian Democratic Socialist Party	217,704	4.2	2	1
Italian Social Movement	186,412	3.6	1	1
Italian Republican Party	162,090	3.1	1	=
Italian Liberal Party	156,745	3.0	1	=
Radical Party	154,257	3.0	1	1
Others	63,291	1.2	-	=
Total parties	5,209,969	100.0	48	=

Sources: Italian Ministry of the Interior