ROME, March 10, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni faces a fresh test from regional elections Sunday in Abruzzo, two weeks after a vote in Sardinia delivered her first defeat since taking office.

Meloni and members of her hard-right coalition government have been campaigning hard in the central region, keen to avoid a loss that could give the leftist opposition momentum ahead of European elections in June.

The current president of Abruzzo, Marco Marsilio, in 2019 became the first regional president from Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party, and is standing again.

While publishing opinion polls is illegal in the run-up to elections, media reports suggest a tight race with centre-left candidate Luciano D'Amico.

The university rector is backed by the main opposition Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement, as well as two small centrist parties.

Deeply divided, Italy's opposition parties have struggled to make headway against Meloni since she took office in October 2022, with nationwide opinion polls giving Brothers of Italy a consistent seven- or eight-point lead.

But the Sardinia election on February 25 gave them hope, even if the joint Democratic Party-Five Star candidate only triumphed by less than 2,000 votes.

Voters in both Sardinia and Abruzzo are fickle -- for the past two decades, the presidency in each region has switched every five years from left to right and back again.

This would suggest Marsilio would break the mould by being re-elected.

Local factors such as healthcare also play a key role in voting behaviour, analysts emphasise.

But Meloni has taken no chances in a region she herself represents in parliament, sending more than a dozen ministers to campaign, who have announced a number of investments.

She also staged a joint rally in Pescara on Tuesday with her coalition partners, Matteo Salvini of the far-right League and Antonio Tajani of the right-wing Forza Italia.

A defeat for Meloni "would certainly amplify the enthusiasm and motivation" among her opponents, noted Giovanni Orsina, political scientist at Rome's Luiss University, in an article in Sunday's La Stampa newspaper.

By contrast, he wrote, Marsilio's re-election for the right "would bring the emotional needle back... more or less where it was before the Sardinian vote, largely cancelling its effect".

Polls close at 11:00 pm (2200 GMT) on Sunday, with final results expected on Monday.