is Freedom – The Daisy (DL). Re-foundation The party was re-founded in 1997 by Stefano De Luca and re-took its original name in 2004. The new PLI gathered some of the former right-wing Liberals, but soon distanced itself from the centre-right coalition, led by FI, to follow an autonomous path. Popular support Before World Wars the Liberals constituted the political establishment that governed Italy for decades. They had their main bases in Piedmont, where many leading liberal politicians of the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Italy came from, and southern Italy. The Liberals never gained large support after World War II as they were not able to become a mass party and were replaced by Christian Democracy (DC) as the dominant political force. In the 1946 general election, the first after the war, the PLI gained 6.8% as part of the National Democratic Union. At that time they were strong especially in the South, as DC was mainly rooted in the North: 21.0% in Campania, 22.8% in Basilicata, 10.4% in Apulia, 12.8% in Calabria and 13.6% in Sicily. However, the party soon found its main constituency in the industrial elites of the "industrial triangle" formed by Turin, Milan and Genoa. The PLI had its best results in the 1960s, when it was rewarded by conservative voters for their opposition to the participation of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in government. The party won 7.0% of the vote in 1963 (15.2% in Turin, 18.7% in Milan and 11.5% in Genoa) and 5.8% 1963. The PLI suffered a decline in the 1970s and settled around 2–3% in the 1980s, when its strongholds were reduced to Piedmont, especially the provinces of Torino and Cuneo, and, to a minor extent, western Lombardy, Liguria and Sicily. As the other parties of the pentapartito coalition (Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans and Democratic Socialists), the Liberals strengthened their grip on the South, while in the North they lost some of their residual votes to Lega Nord and its precursors. In the 1992 general election, the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PLI won 2.9% of the vote, largely thanks to the increase of votes from the South. After the end of the "First Republic" former Liberals were very influential within Forza Italia (FI) in Piedmont, Liguria and, strangely enough, in Veneto, where Giancarlo Galan was three times elected President. The electoral results of the PLI in