At the 1946 Italian general election, despite competition from the Action Party, which had a similar constituency and regional base, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote, with peaks in its traditional strongholds: around 21% in Romagna (32.5% in Forlì and 37.3% in Ravenna), 16.4% in the Marche (26.6% in Ancona and 32.9% in Jesi), 11.0% in Umbria and 15.2% in Lazio. However, the PRI soon lost its character as a mass party in those areas (although it retained some of its positions there), as the Italian Communist Party conquered many formerly Republican workers' votes and the party settled around 1–2% at the national level in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, under the leadership of Giovanni Spadolini the Republicans gained support among educated middle-class voters, losing some ground in their traditional strongholds, but also increasing their share of vote elsewhere, notably in Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria, where they became a strong competitor to the Italian Liberal Party for the votes of entrepreneurs and professionals. This led to a gradual recovery in the party's fortunes, which reached their highest peak at the 1983 Italian general election. Spadolini had been Prime Minister of Italy for two years by this point, and the party enjoyed a bounce which led it to the 5.1% of the vote. This time, the PRI did better in Piedmont (7.7%, 10.3% in Turin and 12.8% in Cuneo) and Lombardy (6.9%, 12.3% in Milan) than in Emilia-Romagna (5.1%) and the Marche (4.7%). The party did very well in its local strongholds, such as the Province of Forlì-Cesena (11.3%) and the Province of Ravenna (13.9%). At the 1992 Italian general election, the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote (+0.7% from 1987) and increased its share of vote in the South. With the end of the First Republic, the party was severely diminished in term of votes and retreated to its traditional strongholds and in the South. After that, most Republicans from the Marche left the party to join the European Republicans Movement in 2001, and most Republicans from Campania switched to the Democratic Republicans. The PRI was left only with Romagna (where the local party is affiliated to the centre-left) and its new heartlands in Calabria and Sicily. At the 2004 European Parliament election in Italy, the party formed a joint list with the new Italian Liberal Party and won 3.8% of