On election day the parties on the left lost seats while those in the right gained. The winner by a comfortable margin by the DC coalition, defeating the left-wing coalition of the Popular Democratic Front (, FDP) that comprised the Italian Communist Party (, PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (, PSI), on its part funded by the USSR. The Christian Democrats went on to form a government without the Communists, who had been expelled from the government coalition in 1947 and remained frozen out.