Referendum, the No is clearly ahead. Youtrend: "Unbridgeable advantage." Record turnout at 58.9%, counting in progress.

Polling stations closed and from this moment the only wait is to know whether the referendum on the reform of the judiciary ("Rules on the judicial system and the establishment of the Disciplinary Court") has been won by the "Yes" or the "No". As of 3 PM today, March 23, 2026, the voting period has ended and results are awaited. The very first exit polls  show the No leading between 49 and 53 percent. The Yes is estimated between 47 and 51 percent. The data has been released by Opinio Rai, covering a sample of 83 percent. 

The count will begin immediately, and by late afternoon today, more or less consolidated data should be available. Everything will depend on the difference in votes between the two sides.

The first certain data to analyze, however, is that of voter turnout: across Italy (61,533 polling stations), 58.42 percent of eligible voters participated; in Sicily, 46.24 percent, which places the Island at the bottom of the national ranking for percentage of people who voted. Nonetheless, this is a very high percentage for a referendum, which has thrown analysts and pollsters into chaos. The latest analyses that could be published indicated a more certain victory for the "No" in the case of low turnout, and a more favorable result for the "Yes" if turnout had been higher. But no one expected it to be this high, which may signal a remarkable mobilization of the electorate on both sides.

According to the first data, the No is clearly in the lead. With over half of the polling stations counted, the No is ahead of the Yes, with 54.57% of the votes against 45.43%. These are the figures reported by the site Eligendo, which is continuously updated. 

From an initial survey in the northern regions such as Lombardy, Trentino, Friuli, and Veneto, the Yes has won, while in the central-southern regions, the No has won.

"Victory of the NO in the constitutional justice referendum," has already been written on X by Youtrend, highlighting that "with 28,000 polling stations out of 61,533 the lead is now insurmountable."

Turnout and results

The first municipality to complete the counting of all seven of its polling stations in Sicily is Calatabiano, in the province of Catania: 50.73 for the "No", against 49.27 for the "Yes", with a difference of 28 votes. The turnout was at 46 percent.

With one-fifth of the votes counted, Sicily delivers a clear victory to the "No" side, with almost ninety thousand votes ahead of the "Yes" side: the percentage is 61.55 percent. The sections are being updated rapidly.

The latest referendums in Sicily

In the Island, the referendum on labor and citizenship (vote on June 8 and 9, 2025) had a turnout of 23.10 percent. The previous one, on June 12, 2022, which also concerned the election of the judicial members of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary and the separation of functions between prosecuting and judging magistrates, recorded a turnout of 23.3 percent of voters, referring to the Island. Neither of these two recent cases reached the quorum.

To go back to the last constitutional referendums, we must look at the consultation of September 20 and 21, 2020 on the reduction of the number of parliamentarians (the "Yes" won with 69.96 percent) and in Sicily the turnout was 35.39 percent (with 75.88 percent of voters in favor of the reduction). Four years earlier, the constitutional reform proposed by then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was, instead, a resounding rejection of the plan proposed by the government: at the national level, on December 4, 2016, the "No" won with 59.12 percent of the votes. In Sicily, the voters were 56.65 percent of those entitled, of which 71.60 percent voted "No".