Renzi set for leadership of Italian centre-left Matteo Renzi, the mayor of Florence with ambitions to become Italy's next prime minister, was heading on Sunday night to a sweeping victory in elections for leadership of the centre-left Democratic party. With ballots counted from more than two-thirds of 9,000 polling stations, the 38-year-old reformist had taken 68.5 per cent of the vote, well ahead of his two more left-leaning rivals, Gianni Cuperlo and Giuseppe Civati, who had been variously supported by trade unions and the party's ex-communist old guard. Mr Cuperlo accepted defeat. This is not the end of the centre-left but of a managerial class of the centre-left. We are just changing the players, we are not going to the other side," Mr Renzi told cheering supporters in Florence as his landslide was confirmed. His remarks were clearly aimed at those in the party's left-leaning factions who believe Mr Renzi is in the wrong party and would be more at home in the centre-right. But Mr Renzi also reprised a theme of his campaign, that he would not toe the line of Italy's still influential trade unions. "The unions have to change with us," he said, declaring that voters had asked for Italy to "change direction." The turnout in a vote open to all Italians was well above 2m, considerably more than opinion polls had predicted, giving Mr Renzi a strong mandate to reform the party and carry out a generational change in its leadership. While Mr Renzi's clear victory will boost morale for the Democrats after the party's poor showing in last February's inconclusive general election, the outcome adds to the sense of uncertainty hanging over the coalition government it was forced to form as a result. In his campaign rallies, Mr Renzi had challenged prime minister Enrico Letta, formerly the Democrats" deputy leader, to take a tougher line with his junior coalition partners and push ahead with reforms, or call fresh elections. Mr Letta, who has not made clear whether he intends to run for office again, insists the government needs to remain in office until at least early 2015. But the decision by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to lead his centre-right Forza Italia into opposition last month has left Mr Letta with just a slim majority in the upper house, relying on some 30 senators who broke with the billionaire media mogul. Sunday's victory was Mr Renzi's second attempt to break into national politics, with the support of some prominent business figures. One year ago the Florentine mayor lost primaries against the incumbent secretary, Pier Luigi Bersani, a former communist who skilfully deployed loyalists among local party barons to ensure victory. But Mr Bersani's shift to the left and an insipid election campaign in February cost the party dearly, and he resigned after failing to form a government. A brash, fast-talking performer on stage, Mr Renzi projects a sense of youthful urgency after more than a decade of economic decline, a debt crisis that left Italy on the edge of collapse in late 2011, and endless corruption scandals at all levels of government. Mr Renzi has laid out the political reforms he champions involving a difficult rewriting of the constitution, but he has been much vaguer on the big economic questions posed by Brussels in terms of debt control, public spending and taxation policy. Italy now finds itself in the unusual and potentially destabilising situation of having its three main party leaders outside parliament. Mr Berlusconi was stripped of his senate seat last month over his criminal conviction for tax fraud and is barred from running for public office for the next six years. Beppe Grillo, comic-activist leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, did not stand for election last February because of a 1980 conviction for manslaughter involving a car crash. The higher than expected turnout lifted hopes among Democrats that Mr Renzi had managed to win back some of the party's disaffected supporters who had voted for the Five Star Movement, making the protest group the largest opposition force in parliament. However, the scale of Mr Renzi's victory masked a deep sense of unease that still pervades the party, with many of those voting saying they did so out of a sense of desperation rather than conviction. Lining up to cast his vote in Rome, Gabriele, a banker in this 30s, commented: "This is the last chance I give the party for complete renewal. We need leadership. The country needs change and proposals. After this vote, that's enough.