vote and failed to elect any MEPs. In April 2016, the party joined forces with Act!, a splinter group from Lega Nord led by Flavio Tosi, whose sub-group in the Mixed Group of the Chamber of Deputies was named Act!–PRI. After Enrico Costa's entry in August 2017, the sub-group was renamed Act!–PRI–Liberals. In the run-up of the 2018 Italian general election, Saponaro was elected secretary and an alliance with the Liberal Popular Alliance (ALA) was formed. The PRI–ALA list, which was composed of only Republican candidates, presented its slates in one third of the constituencies and obtained 0.1% of the vote. In 2019, Giorgio La Malfa was welcomed back into the party's fold. The PRI was part of More Europe (+E) at the 2019 European Parliament election. In 2020, the PRI formed a pact with Action (A), a political party led by Carlo Calenda. In 2021 Carlo Cottarelli, a former director of the International Monetary Fund, was chosen by the PRI, A, +E, the Liberal Democratic Alliance for Italy (ALI), and The Liberals to head of a scientific committee designed to elaborate of a joint political program. On the occasion of the 2022 Italian general election, the PRI, after having joined Civic Commitment (an electoral list led by Luigi Di Maio within the centre-left coalition) for a few days, joined forces with the Action – Italia Viva, which ran outside the two main electoral coalitions. Popular support Throughout the Kingdom of Italy, the Republicans along with the other party of the far left, the Italian Radical Party, were strong especially among the rural workers in Romagna, in the Marche and around Rome. In the 1890s, they suffered from competition with the Italian Socialist Party for the single-seat constituencies of Emilia-Romagna, where both parties had their heartlands. However, at the 1900 Italian general election the PRI won 4.3% of the vote (7.3% in Lombardy, 9.6% in Emilia-Romagna, 15.0% in the Marche, 9.6% in Umbria and 7.2% in Apulia) and 29 seats from several regions of Italy, including also Veneto and Sicily, where they had some local strongholds. After that, the Republicans were reduced almost to their power base in Romagna and Northern Marche, where the party had more than 40% and where most of their deputies came from. That was why the party, which was little more than a regional party, lost many seats when proportional representation was introduced in 1919.