Italy at the Polls 2022: The Right Strikes Back 3031292979, 9783031292972

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Italy at the Polls 2022 The Right Strikes Back

Fabio Bordignon Luigi Ceccarini James L. Newell

Italy at the Polls 2022

Fabio Bordignon · Luigi Ceccarini · James L. Newell Editors

Italy at the Polls 2022 The Right Strikes Back

Editors Fabio Bordignon Department of Economics, Society and Politics University of Urbino Carlo Bo Urbino, Italy

Luigi Ceccarini Department of Economics, Society and Politics University of Urbino Carlo Bo Urbino, Italy

James L. Newell Department of Economics, Society and Politics University of Urbino Carlo Bo Urbino, Italy

ISBN 978-3-031-29297-2 ISBN 978-3-031-29298-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

The Normality of Cleavages: When Citizens Vote Against Rather Than For The outcome of the election of 25 September 2022, with the success of the coalition of the centre right and especially of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), reflected the latest cleavage (to cite the model advanced by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan in 1967), or the latest fracture to emerge in Italy’s post-war electoral history. During the First Republic, the cleavage that had been most apparent at Italian elections until the 1980s was the one symbolised by the Berlin Wall—one reflecting the geopolitical division between the West and the countries of the Soviet Block. ‘Anti-communism’ had ‘condemned’ the DC to a permanent role in government because it had been impossible to contemplate alternation in office with political parties that looked upon the Soviet Union, if not with favour, at least without explicit hostility. Consequently, for many years, the Italian political system had had what Giorgio Galli (1966) called an ‘imperfect two-party system’ in order to emphasise that the two largest parties had pre-defined and obligatory political roles to play. The Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats, DC) and their allies constituted the parties of government, with the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party, PCI) and its successors being confined permanently to the opposition.

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In the 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the First Republic, Silvio Berlusconi built a new but similar ‘wall’—the socalled ‘muro di Arcore’ after the name of the small town in Lombardy where he has his sumptuous residence—thereby becoming the main representative of anti-communist voters. Meanwhile, on the initiative of Romano Prodi and Arturo Parisi among others, the DC’s successors, together with the left, came together beneath the branches of the Olive Tree—the symbol adopted by the coalition of the centre-left from 1995 to 2004—subsequently giving birth to the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). But despite these dramatic changes, political traditions persisted. Indeed, in 2008, electoral behaviour in almost three quarters of Italian provinces was analogous to, if not identical with, the behaviour found there in 1953 (Diamanti, 2009), oriented by the same anti-communist fracture, because the party choices facing voters were inspired by deeply rooted traditions and identities, by consolidated cleavages. In particular, the cleavages separating Church and state, centre and periphery, employers and workers, still counted for much. The PCI had been the party of manual workers and non-Church goers, the DC the representative of Catholics, especially in those parts of the country where the Church gave rise to social communities through its networks of flanking organisations and the provision of services. This was a role that was played by the parties of the left and especially by the PCI in those parts of the country where they were most deeply rooted; for both they and the DC were ‘mass parties’ with an organised presence, on the ground, in the localities. It was no accident, therefore, that the cleavages they sustained lasted for so long. It was no accident either that the advent of Berlusconi coincided with the emergence of a new ‘party model’, one whose raison d’être lay not in ideological and historical traditions but in the requirements of its leader. This was because Berlusconi helped to consolidate a new phenomenon: the ‘personalisation of politics’. He himself was the founder of Forza Italia (FI), a ‘personal party’ as Mauro Calise (2010) called it. This was a party type that was imitated by other—indeed by all—parties, including the most traditional ones, like the PD, which in 2013 was in its turn ‘personalised’ by Matteo Renzi. The party was profoundly changed as a result, and at the time I re-defined it as the PDR: the Partito di Renzi (or ‘Renzi’s Party’). Renzi was the main protagonist of another election marking a turning point—the European election of 2014 when the

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PD took 40%, Berlusconi having resigned in 2011 brought down by the Eurozone crisis—and the emergence of another cleavage. However, ‘personalisation’ undermined the parties’ distinct identities because the political life-spans of individuals are briefer and more uncertain than the life-spans of parties typically are. Consequently, they became more fragile, and increasingly unstable, entities. Hence, from 2013, every election had the potential to mark the emergence of a new ‘fracture’: a potential nourished by the fact that the dominant political sentiment among voters was anti-political: no longer a sense of belonging, of attachment to a political creed, but one of mistrust. This explains the support for ‘anti-party parties’: parties that exploit and foment feelings of resentment. Two, in particular, were significant. One was the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) inspired and led by the comedian, Beppe Grillo, who conceived of his creation as a ‘non-party’ as it called itself when it made its parliamentary debut in 2013. Led by Luigi Di Maio, it won the (watershed) election of 2018 taking more than 32% of the vote and formed the new government together with Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League), which in its turn had also become a (national) anti-party party. Much less associated with regional divisions and with the North than it had originally been, Salvini’s League—the Ligue Nationale as I called it in order to emphasise his affinities with Marine Le Pen in France—followed the same anti-political trajectory enabling it to win 34.3% at the European election the following year. Together, the League and the M5s gave birth to the so-called ‘yellow-green’ government, which survived in office for little more than a year, until the summer of 2019. The distribution of the vote became less geographically distinct, the colours of the political map progressively fading. The ‘white’ areas had already become ‘green’ and subsequently ‘green-blue’ following the disintegration of the DC and its replacement as dominant party in these areas by the League with the support of FI. The ‘red belt’, on the other hand, retained its distinctiveness but grew smaller as Umbria and Marche lost their traditional colour while elections in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany became increasingly competitive. Overall, Italy became ‘colourless’ and lost its distinct geopolitical traditions. Moreover, driven by the anti-political sentiments of the postBerlusconi era, recent years have been marked by a succession of crises both within and between parties: crises provoked by growing economic and budgetary problems that have made Italy increasingly reliant on Europe’s monetary authorities.

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The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, finally, profoundly altered the climate of public opinion. Mistrust gave way to fear as the predominant sentiment, increasing the significance of leaders and undermining the role of parties, with the high point represented by Mario Draghi’s assumption of office as Prime Minister. That he came to office partly as the result of pressure exerted by Europe’s political and monetary authorities is not surprising. He had, after all, been an Italian and then EU public official, heading first the Bank of Italy and then the European Central Bank. However, he was not an ‘elected’ leader and the arrival in office of his government confirmed that Italy’s system of representative democracy was in crisis. Giuseppe Conte, too, had been an ‘unelected’ Prime Minister, governing mainly by decree, by-passing Parliament. Mario Draghi, in his turn, heightened the sense that Italy had acquired a de facto presidential (and technocratic) form of government—precisely because, as mentioned, he too was unelected. Moreover, he had been drawn from the world of economics and finance and was sustained by a majority consisting of almost all the parties represented in Parliament. In opposition, and not by chance, there remained just one party: Meloni’s FdI—which—again not by chance—won the election of September 2022 becoming the largest party at the head of the coalition of the centre right. This represented the emergence of a new cleavage because, for the first time, the election had been won by the successors to the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement, MSI) and Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance, AN), and because for the first time the role of Prime Minister was assumed by a woman. The distinctiveness of the election was reinforced by a number of other factors, especially the geography of voting. In relation to the coalitions, the electoral map of Italy has assumed a predominantly blue colour, accentuated on the right by FdI. It includes patches of other colours, pale reflections of the past, including the light red of the centre-left in four provinces of the centre-north and the yellow of the M5s in three provinces of the South. The colouring of this map changes significantly if we consider not the coalitions but the individual parties. In that case, the areas coloured yellow expand considerably in the South: the area with the largest number of claimants of the citizenship income, promoted and defended by the M5s. Meanwhile, the areas coloured red—or rather light red—remain confined to the centre of the country: the area that was once

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called the ‘red belt’ because it had, historically, been distinguished by the deeply rooted presence of the parties of the left. It is difficult not to notice the profound changes, not only in electoral behaviour but in its social and geographical foundations, reflected in the results and in the personalities and the roles of the political leaders. These are the roles that have become increasingly personal and presidential. In the Italian Republic, the political personalities voters today consider most credible and in whom they most believe are both presidents: the president of the Republic and the president of the Council of Ministers (to use the Prime Minister’s official title). Italy has become a ‘personalised democracy’, one in which political participation is limited, or rather limited to the media. It has above all become a digital, ‘immediate’, democracy, one lacking both mediators and mediation (Diamanti, 2014). Thus, it is that the country’s cleavages have been normalised. For the book containing our analyses of the results of the 2013 election—analyses based on the data provided by LaPolis (Università di Urbino Carlo Bo) and the research institute, Demos—we had chosen the title, Un salto nel voto (2013),1 to emphasise that citizens’ voting choices are no longer structured or predictable in advance. The subsequent elections, held in 2018 and 2019, confirmed this idea, and in the light of the elections of September 2022, we can once more reaffirm it—though with even greater emphasis, for the emergence of new cleavages has become ‘normal’. A final remark needs to be made about those who failed to vote, because FdI’s victory was made possible, or rather accentuated, by the very low turnout, which reached a historic low. The election of September 2022 attracted the participation of less than two thirds of the electorate—63.8%: the lowest proportion since 1948. In 1976, 93% of the electorate had voted. More recently, in 2018, 73% had done so. This means that in reality, FdI won the election with the support of 16% of those with the right to vote. While this does nothing to undermine either the party’s success or the legitimacy of the outcome, it does reinforce that idea that recent years have seen a growing detachment of citizens from the democratic institutions: a detachment that is expressed by ‘voting against’ or not voting at all.

1 Translator’s note: The title (meaning literally, ‘A leap into the vote’) is a play on the similarity between the word ‘voto’ and the word ‘vuoto’ (meaning ‘void’).

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And in the country where citizens vote to oppose parties rather than to support them, the only genuine cleavage could ultimately turn out to be one reflecting continuity, or otherwise, of electoral choices. Urbino, Italy

Ilvo Diamanti

Bibliography Calise, M. (2010). Il partito personale. I due corpi del leader. Laterza editori. Diamanti, I. (2009). Mappe dell’Italia politica. Bianco, rosso, verde, azzurro… e tricolore. Il Mulino. Diamanti, I. (2014). Democrazia ibrida. Il Mulino. Diamanti, I., Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (Eds.). (2013). Un salto nel voto. Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi. Laterza editori. Galli, G. (1966). Il bipartitismo imperfetto: comunisti e democristiani in Italia. Il Mulino. Lipset, S.M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: An introduction. In S. M. Lipset & S. Rokkan (Eds.), Party systems and voter alignments: Cross-national perspectives (pp. 1–64). Free Press. Ilvo Diamanti is professor emeritus at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo and former professor at the Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas. He is the founder and Director of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—and of the polling organisation, Demos&Pi. He is a political columnist for the newspaper la Repubblica.

Contents

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Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They Have Come From and Where They Are Going Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarini, and James L. Newell

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The Outcome: Electoral Trends and the Geopolitics of Voting Elisa Lello, James L. Newell, and Fabio Turato

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Grappling with a Difficult Decision: How Voters Made Their Choices Luigi Ceccarini, James L. Newell, and Fabio Turato

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Citizens’ Engagement with the ‘Seaside Campaign’ on Instagram and Facebook Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Fabio Giglietto, and Anna Stanziano

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New and Old (Global) Cleavages, Crises and Wars Fabio Bordignon and Luigi Ceccarini

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Outside the Ballot Box: Who Is the Italian Abstainer? Fabio Bordignon and Giacomo Salvarani

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Methodological Note

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Giovanni Boccia Artieri teaches Sociology of Communication and Digital Media at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He serves as scientific coordinator of LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication, and of the Ph.D. programme in Humanities: Communication and digital cultures sciences. Fabio Bordignon teaches Political Science at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He serves as scientific coordinator of the Electoral Observatory of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—and is a senior researcher and methodological advisor to the polling organisation, Demos&Pi. Luigi Ceccarini teaches Public Opinion Analysis at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He serves as the scientific coordinator of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies. He is a senior researcher for the polling organisation, Demos&Pi, and President of the Italian Society of Electoral Studies. Fabio Giglietto teaches Internet Studies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, where he also serves as the lead researcher for the ‘Mapping Italian News’ programme, developed as part of the scientific activities of LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Elisa Lello teaches Political Sociology at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. She is a member of the research group of LaPolis, the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies. James L. Newell is a former professor at the University of Salford (UK) and teaches Contemporary Politics at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He is a member of the research group of LaPolis, the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies. He serves as co-editor of the journal, Contemporary Italian Politics. Giacomo Salvarani is a research fellow in the Department of Economics, Society and Politics at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He contributes to the research activities of LaPolis, the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies. Anna Stanziano is a research fellow in Digital Political Communication at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. She is a member of the research group of LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication, where she contributes to the research programme, ‘Mapping Italian News’. Fabio Turato teaches International Relations at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He is a member of the research group of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—and works as a senior researcher for the polling organisation, Demos&Pi.

Abbreviations

+EU AIRE AN Az DC DS EU FdI FI IC IE ILGA ISP IV LaPolis LaRiCA LDA LeU LGBTQI+ LN LSQ M5s

More Europe (+Europa) Register of Italian Residents Abroad (Anagrafe degli Italiani Residenti all’Estero) National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) Action (Azione) Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana) Left Democrats (Democratici di Sinistra) European Union Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) (Forza Italia) Civic Commitment (Impegno Civico) Italexit for Italy (Italexit per l’Italia) International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association Sovereign and Popular Italy (Italia Sovrana e Popolare) Italy Alive (Italia Viva) Laboratory of Political and Social Studies (Laboratorio di Studi Politici e Sociali) Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication (Laboratorio di Ricerca sulla Comunicazione Avanzata Latent Dirichlet Allocation Free and Equal (Liberi e Uguali) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Northern League (Lega Nord) Least Squares Quadratic Five-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle)

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ABBREVIATIONS

MAIE MEP MSI NATO NGO NM NRRP PATT PCI PD PdCI Pdl PDS PRC PRI SCN SEL SI SMSP SVP UP USEI VS ZTL

Associative Movement of Italians Abroad (Movimento Associativo Italiani all’Estero) Member of the European Parliament Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Non-Governmental Organization Noi Moderati (We Moderates) National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza) Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party (Partito Autonomista Trentino Tirolese) Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano) Democratic Party (Partito Democratico) Party of Italian Communists (Partito dei Comunisti Italiani) People of Freedom (Popolo della libertà) Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra) Party of Communist Refoundation (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista) Italian Republican Party (Partito Repubblicano Italiano) South Calls North (Sud Chiama Nord) The Left, Ecology, Freedom (Sinistra, Ecologia, Libertà) Italian Left (Sinistra Italiana) Single-member simple plurality system South Tyrolean People’s Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei) Popular Union (Unione Popolare) South American Union of Italian Emigrants (Unione Sudamericana Emigrati Italiani) Green-Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra) Restricted Traffic Area (Zona a traffico limitato)

List of Figures

Chapter 2 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Results of the Italian general election of 2022: differences as compared to the election of 2018—Chamber of Deputies (% variations; absolute variations in parentheses) (Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior) First coalition in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano, due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior) First party in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano, due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior)

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Chapter 3 Fig. 1

When did you decide which party to vote for in the general election? (%; 2006–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

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LIST OF FIGURES

Portion of voters of each political party who reported never having had any doubts about their decision to vote for it (%; 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) During the election campaign, how frequently did you discuss politics with family or friends? (% ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’, 2008–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) In the month before polling day, how often did you receive information about the general election campaign from the following sources? (%, 2008–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) Typology of information consumers during the campaign (%, 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

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Chapter 4 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Political posts published on Facebook and Instagram from 21 July to 25 September 2022 Engagement related to political posts published on Facebook and Instagram from 21 July to 25 September 2022 Main topics and issues on Facebook in the 12 analysed peaks Main topics and issues on Instagram in the 14 analysed peaks

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Chapter 5 Fig. 1

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Fig. 3

Left, Right, and Outside: the main parties in the ideological space (2018–2022).* Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases) Political space as defined by indicators of crisis (2018–2022). Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases) Political space and the special measures related to the ‘two wars’ (2022). Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

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LIST OF FIGURES

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Chapter 6 Fig. 1

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Fig. 3

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Fig. 5

Electoral abstention: the trend (%; 1948–2022) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior data) The geography of electoral abstention 2022 (% in 107 Italian Provinces; ten groups based on deciles) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior data) Non-voters by social group (%) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, estimates based on a pooled file of three surveys September–October 2022 [base: 3,320 cases]) Self-reported reasons for non-voting (%, figures for 2018 in brackets) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) The determinants of abstention (only significant effects) (Note Predicted probabilities based on a series of logit models presented in the online Appendix [see Table A6.1]. Only significant effects are displayed, based on the following models: 2 Model 2; 3 Model 3; 4 Model 4; 5 Model 5; 6 Model 6 [levels: L = Low; H = High; N = No; Y = Yes; P = placed; NP = not placed]. Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

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List of Tables

Chapter 2 Table 1 Table 2

2022 Italian general election results: votes and seats in the Chamber of Deputies Party support by gender, age, education and occupation, 2022

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Chapter 3 Table 1 Table 2

Are the people with whom you talked about politics … (2008–2022) Sources of information during the campaign by typology of information consumers (column % replying ‘often’, 2022)

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Chapter 4 Table 1

Top ten relevant topics on Facebook and Instagram in the analysed period

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They Have Come From and Where They Are Going Fabio Bordignon , Luigi Ceccarini , and James L. Newell

Abstract This chapter frames the 2022 election and its outcome within the debate on the evolution of the Italian political system and its ‘n Republics’. It first discusses the meaning of these (controversial) labels using them to illustrate why, starting from the early 1990s, it is possible to talk about a political transition towards a Second Republic and why that political system was (at least partly) superseded in 2011. In doing so, it considers what were the main unifying elements brought about by the electoral events of this new, turbulent phase of Italian politics as they

F. Bordignon · L. Ceccarini · J. L. Newell (B) Department of Economics, Society, Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy e-mail: [email protected] F. Bordignon e-mail: [email protected] L. Ceccarini e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_1

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existed until the eve of the 2022 elections. The chapter then attempts to use this interpretive framework to understand the most recent Italian election, trying to highlight its elements of continuity and change. By doing this, it illustrates the layout of the book, the leading questions addressed by its different chapters and the main findings of the research. Keywords Electoral behaviour · Electoral volatility · Italian general elections · Italian political transition · Italian Second Republic · Populism

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Introduction

Since the end of 2011, Italy has entered a new phase of its political development, one that has been grafted onto the never-completed transition to the so-called Second Republic. This phase conventionally began in 1994 when Silvio Berlusconi, along with his ‘own’ party, Forza Italia (FI), made their political debut. This epoch-making event took place in the context of the collapse of the First Republic due to the ‘mani pulite’ (‘clean hands’) judicial investigations into political corruption, also known as Tangentopoli (bribe city) (Newell, 2021). Even before the contours of so-called Second Republic became clear, its demise was often predicted by pundits and politicians. Such predictions did not, generally, include suggestions about what any ‘new’ Republic might look like. But the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi on 12 November 2011 and the advent of Mario Monti’s technocratic government marked the end of an era in the history of the Italian party system. The broad centre-right and centre-left coalitions broke up, paving the way for a grand coalition to take office. Berlusconi’s personal party, and his personal reputation, became progressively weaker. Meanwhile, the pro/anti-Berlusconi cleavage lost some of its strength. The distance between voters and parties grew wider, marking the revival of widespread anti-political sentiments in Italian society, which were then expressed, at the general election of 2013, by the extraordinary success of the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s). Many of the distinctive features of the Italian political system as these had existed for nearly two decades, vanished and gave way to an uncertain and fluid landscape, one that was marked by widespread protest and system instability (Newell & Ceccarini, 2019). In this new political era,

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which has now lasted for more than a decade, each general election has been described as a turning point, albeit one pointing in different directions each time. ‘Political seismographs’ registered the 2013 and 2018 elections as ‘earthquakes’. Change and instability could be identified as the hallmarks of the new Italian political context. Against this background, the general election of 2022 represented yet another turning point, with the undisputed success of the new rightwing alliance led by Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI) and its leader, Giorgia Meloni. This election suggested the existence of some elements in common with what had emerged at the two previous elections in 2013 and 2018. At the same time, it marked a further break, one that seemed to point to the recreation of some important features of the phase before, the so-called Second Republic. This book, published a few months after the Italian general election held on 25 September, aims to offer a preliminary but accurate reading of this important political event in the light of the changes that preceded it. The analyses and explanations are based on the work conducted by two research centres of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo: The Electoral Observatory of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies— and LaRiCA—the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication. In particular, this introductory chapter aims to frame the 2022 general election within the debate on the evolution of the Italian political system and its ‘n Republics’. In the following sections, the meaning of these (controversial) labels will be discussed. They will be used to illustrate why, starting from the early 1990s, it is possible to talk about a political transition towards a Second Republic and why that political system, centred on the ‘Berlusconi model’, has been (at least partly) overcome since 2011. In doing so, these sections will consider primarily what were the main unifying elements brought about by the electoral events of this new, turbulent phase of Italian politics as they existed until the eve of the 2022 elections. The second part of this chapter will attempt to use this interpretive framework to understand the most recent Italian election, trying to highlight its elements of continuity and change. By doing this, it will also illustrate the leading questions addressed by the book and the main findings presented in its chapters.

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The Never-Ending Italian Political Transition

The changes that affected electoral behaviour and citizens’ orientations to politics must be considered against the background of the troubled transition from the First to the Second Republic, and of the new phase of Italian political history initiated at the end of 2011. The so-called First Republic—covering the period from the end of the War to the political upheavals of the early 1990s—was characterised by a symbiotic relationship between society and politics. It was a party democracy, according to the definitions of various distinguished scholars (Mair, 2013; Manin, 1997). Italian voters had a marked sense of political and social identification embedded in traditional ideological and cultural narratives. At the same time, the traditional socio-political cleavages were deeply rooted geographically and strongly felt by citizens in their everyday lives. This gave rise to the structuring of two enduring geopolitical zones, the so-called zona bianca (‘white area’) and zona rossa (‘red belt’). The former was rooted in the North-Eastern regions, where the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats, DC) had their strongholds thanks to their links with the Catholic Church and with grassroots religious associations and organisations. The latter, the red belt, was rooted in the central regions of the peninsula, where the presence of the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist party, PCI) and its flanking organisations— trade unions, civic and leisure associations, and governing majorities in a large number of municipal administrations—shaped society at local level. As a result, the so-called vote of belonging kept the party system ‘frozen’ for several decades. Referred to by Giorgio Galli (1966) as an ‘imperfect two-party system’, to refer to the absence of alternation in government between the two main parties, it was one that enabled the DC to rule for more than 40 years while the PCI was continuously confined to the status of opposition party (at least at the national level). After nearly fifty years, the party system underwent a profound transformation. With the end of international bipolarity, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Italy was able to ‘go beyond’ its ‘blocked’ political system. Political change was favoured by the progressive erosion of the links between parties (and their leaders) and society. Meanwhile, the ‘clean hands’ judicial investigations into corruption and illicit party funding finally brought about the disintegration of the traditional

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governing parties. Judicial investigations triggered the end of a ‘degenerate’ system, and an entire political class was forced to vacate the political stage. Silvio Berlusconi and his personal party, FI, joined the political fray and significantly influenced the development of the so-called Second Republic. Several interconnected developments explained the transformation of politics and the party system in the Second Republic—a term originally coined by journalists to refer to the sense that a regime transition had been initiated, even though the essentials of the 1948 Constitution remained in place. Even without a redefinition of the country’s institutional arrangements, a ‘new’ Republic was born. Two of the aforementioned developments involved the functioning of parties and government institutions: the personalisation and mediatisation of politics. These elements, common to Western democracies in general, marked the advent in Italy of ‘audience democracy’ (Manin, 1997). A third development concerned the relationship between parties and thus the party system as a whole. This was affected by the very different electoral laws of 1993 and 2005, the so-called Mattarellum and Porcellum (see below). The above dynamics generated a majoritarian bipolar system strongly influenced by the presidentialisation of politics (Poguntke & Webb, 2007). However, this period also came to an end. 2011 was the year of the crisis of Berlusconi’s government and leadership. His approach to politics had enabled him to rise to prominence in the Second Republic and he had been four times prime minister. However, he and his party gradually lost electoral support after their last victory at the 2008 election, and he resigned as head of government in the autumn of 2011. Financial developments were largely responsible for this outcome: the rise in the spread with German bonds reached 575 basis points on 9 November, and shares on the Milan Stock Exchange continued to fall in value. Berlusconi’s slow decline as a political actor and the (supposed) crisis of ‘Berlusconism’ were echoed by developments not just in his party but also in the institutions of government. In other words, 2011 was the end of an era, one representing the crumbling of a system (Ceccarini et al., 2012). In this context, the weakness of the other major actor in the Italian political arena—the PD—also became apparent. The two main parties of the two political blocs of the Second Republic together had won more

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than 70% of the vote at the 2008 general election. Their support fell dramatically in 2013 (see Chapter 2). In addition to the problems attributable to the instability of the centreleft and centre-right coalitions, these two parties also had to deal with the growth of anti-political sentiments on the part of citizens who had begun to contemplate these political actors with growing detachment. The digital revolution and the development of the platform society created opportunities for a new form of populism. Indeed, the general election of 2013 brought the digital populism of the M5s to the centre of Italian politics (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013). This party won 25.6% of the vote at its first national electoral outing. In 2018, its support again rose, reaching 33%. Something similar happened to Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League), which grew from 4% in 2013 to 17% in 2018.

3

From ‘Devout’ to ‘Liquid’ Voters

A highly fluid and volatile electoral landscape has characterised Italy since 2011. The sequence of legislative (2013 and 2018) and European elections (2014 and 2019) has seen major changes in the electoral strength of the parties. Some of them have experienced great surges in popular support, as in the case of Matteo Renzi’s PD in the 2014 European elections, of Beppe Grillo and Luigi Di Maio’s M5s in the 2013 and 2018 general elections, and of Salvini’s League in 2018 and 2019 (leading to the resounding 34% in the most recent European elections). All these extraordinary, and partly unforeseen, performances were, however, followed by phases of rapid downturn, often connected to the leaders’ ruinous decline. To be understood, these dynamics need to be seen against the background of the evolution of the political system presented in the previous section, linking it to the social transformations that have characterised the country in recent decades, within the broader global transformations. During the so-called First Republic, parties had been mass membership organisations capable of instilling an enduring sense of loyalty among their supporters, also because they reflected deep-seated social cleavages of religion and class. During this era, when church-going was the norm among vast swathes of the population and the Catholic Church was therefore influential in Italian politics, the practising Catholic voted for the DC as

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a matter of course, without thinking about it, as that was simply what the faithful Catholic did. On the other side of the ideological divide, the same was true of the PCI and the working-class voter, employed in one of the large industrial establishments, like FIAT, for example. Voting orientations were also sharply distinguished geographically. North-Eastern regions were oriented towards the DC and the central ones towards PCI. Indeed, the DC and PCI in particular, having led the Resistance Movement and thereby established themselves as the only stable points of reference for ordinary Italians in the period of chaos and uncertainty that followed the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943, were, in the North-Eastern and Central regions, able to acquire positions of complete hegemony. Dominating local government and interest groups, such as those for small farmers (like Coldiretti), the CISL trade union confederation and Catholic associations (the DC) and the CGIL trade union confederation (the PCI), and with a solid presence in the localities, they were able to secure the unswerving loyalty of voters and activists by taking care of their needs ‘from the cradle to the grave’. In both cases, the vote was a matter of ‘faith’. All this began to unravel in the wake of the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and the 1960s, with its new possibilities and altered horizons for voters. Thus, by the 1990s, which had since seen the growth of celebrity culture and the beginnings of the mediatisation and personalisation of politics, voters had already become detached and critical in their relations with parties. For the era was one in which political leaders, no longer needing well-oiled party machines for the dissemination of their messages, could appeal to voters, through television. Voting was to a decreasing extent influenced by traditional socioeconomic or ideological cleavages. Stances embraced by politicians, mainly thanks to the work of political consultants, were those that were most effective and advantageous in the electoral context of a given political moment. Selected issues and specific values rather than universal narratives dominated communication strategies. Voters, being freed from the ties typical of party democracy, appeared more autonomous (and more undecided) in their voting choices. Intense electoral volatility reflected low degrees of party loyalty. Early twenty-first-century Italy is therefore characterised by a political landscape in which old social cleavages have declined in significance and new ones have emerged. Arising from the so-called silent revolution

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(Inglehart, 1977, 1990), the growth of post-material value priorities and the emergence of so-called identity politics, the new cleavages are ones that reflect voters’ tendency to identify themselves, less in terms of class or religion, and increasingly in terms of things like gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and so on. It is a world that has seen an acceleration in the pace of globalisation since the 1970s. This has undermined the capacity of the government, along with national governments everywhere, to deliver public goods in defiance of international political and economic trends, to which they are obliged to adapt, while leading to the emergence of the new division between the so-called winners and losers of globalisation (Kriesi et al., 2008). Governments’ reduced capacities have made it increasingly difficult for mainstream parties of the left to distinguish themselves from their competitors on the right, accelerating their long-term decline. Meanwhile, the rise of post-Fordist regimes of capital accumulation, the growth of computer technology and the emergence of global supply chains have led, on the one hand, to the emergence of new industries employing highly educated, geographically mobile workers, cosmopolitan in outlook and sensitive to the new claims of identity politics. On the other hand, they have led to a growing sense, among those in declining sectors that they have been ‘left behind’. Less well educated than globalisation’s winners, more conservative in outlook, with national rather than cosmopolitan horizons and fearful of globalisation’s implications for their security of employment, they have been attracted by populist and xenophobic parties. Using migrants as a focus for these voters’ resentments, the parties have increasingly won the support of people who would once have naturally voted for the left but who are now unable to perceive its relevance to them. Thus, it is that Italy’s electoral politics has come increasingly to resemble those of other democracies, with the division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ explaining much of what drives voters’ choices (Ceccarini, 2018: 156–182). In the Italian case, this was already clear at the time of the 2018 election when it was apparent that ‘winners’, attracted to the PD’s cosmopolitanism and commitment to anti-discrimination, had abandoned it to a lesser extent than other groups, and when the election had given rise to the curiosity of what was referred to as class voting ‘in reverse’ (De Sio, 2018). Thus, while the party won 13.1% among the self-perceived working class, it took 18.3% in the self-perceived middle class and 31.2% among the self-perceived upper-middle class, with the

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differences in voting propensities remaining even when controlling for related variables (ibidem). The voting habits of globalisation’s ‘losers’ on the other hand diverged sharply from—indeed were the mirror image of—those of ‘winners’. Traditional cleavages have gradually lost meaning and value from voters’ perspectives. Voting appears to be less and less a means of expressing an ideological sense of belonging and more and more an individualised decision, to be made afresh at each election, and involving, first and foremost, a decision about whether or not to go to the polls at all (see Chapter 6). This is a metamorphosis that originates from the shift in Italians’ socio-cultural perspectives—citizens’ political cultures— and reverberates at a systemic level, through the diverse modes of political participation, primarily the act of voting. It was against this background that the populist M5s and the League achieved their electoral successes of 2018, followed by their arrival in office with the so-called yellow-green Conte I government (2018–2019). These results seemed to take Italy into uncharted territory (Ceccarini & Newell, 2019).

4 The Electoral Law(s) and the Constitutional Referendum The 2018 elections also marked another important institutional change, one concerning the Rosato electoral law. This had been passed in 2017, as the latest in a series of no fewer than five systems to be adopted since the political upheavals of the early 1990s. This places Italy alongside Japan and New Zealand as one of the three democracies that changed their electoral systems in the 1990s—but makes it a dramatic outlier given the number of times it has changed its system since then. The permanence of electoral-system reform, and of institutional reform generally, on the agenda of Italian politics since the early 1990s, is revealing of the extent of the delegitimation of the country’s political institutions. The five electoral systems in question have—curiously—come to be referred to in journalistic parlance using Latin-sounding portmanteaux. This is a habit initiated by the political scientist, Giovanni Sartori who, critical of the first, 1993, reform, referred to it as the Mattarellum—after its principal parliamentary sponsor, Sergio Mattarella—to indicate that he thought the reform ‘slightly mad’ (‘matto’ meaning ‘mad’ in Italian). Hence, the Mattarellum has since been followed by the Porcellum (from

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the Italian, ‘porcata’, meaning—roughly—‘a pig’s breakfast’) (2005), the Consultellum (2013), the (never used) Italicum (2015) and finally, the system introduced in 2017, the Rosatellum, after the name of its principal parliamentary sponsor, the then PD deputy, Ettore Rosato. The new system marked a further departure from the majority drive of the early 1990s, although this latter feature survived in it. As we have written elsewhere, the Rosatellum is a hybrid system. It provides for 37% of the seats in both chambers to be distributed through the single-member simple plurality system (SMSP), 61% through a proportional system with closed lists presented in multi-member constituencies (while the remaining 2% is allocated to the constituency for Italians resident abroad). Each multi-member constituency is thus associated with two or more single-member constituencies. The voter is given a ballot paper bearing the names of the candidates in the single-member constituency in which he/she resides, beneath which appear the symbols of the party or parties supporting them, together with the names of their candidates in the relevant multi-member constituency. The voter may vote both for a candidate in the single-member constituency and for one or the other of the supporting lists in the relevant multi-member constituency, but may not cast a split vote. If he/ she votes only for one of the party lists, the vote is attributed, automatically, to the single-member candidate supported by that list. Votes cast in favour of the candidate in the single-member constituency alone, on the other hand, are distributed among the parties supporting him/her, in proportion to the votes obtained in the same constituency. To obtain seats, the lists, both in the Chamber and in the Senate, must pass a 3% national-level threshold1 and coalitions a 10% threshold at national level.2 It must be emphasised that when the largest parties in the individual constituencies are also the largest parties at the national level, one of the effects of SMSP electoral systems is to lead to a (greater or lesser)

1 In the Senate, lists that exceed 20% in a single region also obtain seats. In the Chamber, the 20% regional threshold only applies to lists representing linguistic minorities. In both chambers, lists representing linguistic minorities that have elected at least two candidates in single-member constituencies participate in the distribution of seats. 2 Provided that at least one list belonging to the coalition has reached 3%.

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disproportion between the votes received and the seats allocated in Parliament.3 In the specific case of the 2022 elections, it was anticipated that this disproportion would be greater rather than lesser, thanks to the 2020 constitutional reform, which reduced the number of MPs (see Chapter 2). The reform had been a flagship measure of the M5s, central to its claim to be the authentic representative of ordinary Italians against what it called the casta (or ‘caste’): the representatives, in public institutions, of the mainstream political parties, whose only interest, the M5s argued, was to retain their seats and feather their own nests, often by recourse to corruption. The measure thus drew on, and nourished, widespread popular resentments and anti-political sentiments and gained additional traction through the claim that it would ‘reduce the costs of politics’, even though objective analyses of the likely cost savings of the measure revealed that the benefits to the public purse would be small, to say the least. Others pointed out that, by increasing the workloads of the parliamentarians that remained once their number had been cut, the reform would make it more difficult for the legislature to perform its crucial function of executive scrutiny and holding governments to account. Be that as it may, no one was especially surprised when the measure, having been put to a popular vote in September 2020, was passed by 70% to 30% on a turnout of 51.1%—with the result of reducing the number of Deputies from 630 to 400 and the number of Senators from 315 to 200. What is crucial for present purposes is that a further effect of the measure was to reduce the number of constituencies while increasing their size.

5

General Election 2022: In What Republic?

The result achieved by the centre-right coalition and, within it, the success of FdI, at the expense of its allies, were the most important, and expected, results of the Italian general election of 2022. Giorgia Meloni had a

3 So much so that, depending on the relative size of the constituencies and the

geographical distribution of the vote, it is even possible for this system to result in fewer seats being allocated to the largest party than to the second largest party at national level, as happened in the United Kingdom in the February 1974 general election, when Labour won four more seats than the Conservatives, even though the latter obtained 226,000 more votes.

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prominent role in her party’s vigorous growth over the course of the eighteenth legislature, during which it rose from around 4 to 26%. Expected also was the significant downsizing of the main winner of the 2018 general election, the M5s. Although its vote was more than halved (it lost more than 6.4 million votes), its share declining from 33 to 15%, Giuseppe Conte, former prime minister and new M5s leader, was able to breathe a sigh of relief (see Chapter 2). Despite the outcome, the M5s leader was able to present his party as a quasi-winner, capitalising on the gap between the results and pre-election expectations. A worse result for the M5s and a better outcome for the PD were in fact expected in the pre-election public debates. The reduced distance between the two main protagonists of the failed alliance in the new centre-left camp, the M5s and the PD, also contributed to the public image of Conte’s party as a ‘winner’ of sorts. The largest party of the left, its leader, Enrico Letta, and the ‘narrow coalition’ that was fielded following unsuccessful attempts to create a ‘campo largo’ (‘broad field’) by involving other parties seemed to be the losers. Although the PD grew very slightly in percentage terms as compared to the disappointing result of 2018, it lost 800,000 votes. This additional decline further compounded the party’s long-term crisis and multiple defeats. Moreover, Letta’s party was challenged by the new centrist electoral cartel bringing together Azione (Action) and Italia Viva (Italy Alive) (Az-IV), and led by two prominent figures previously of the centre-left: the former Minister of Economic Development, Carlo Calenda, and ex-general secretary of the PD and former Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi. The union of these two small personal parties won almost 8% of the vote at its election debut. The election was marked by an increase in the rate of abstention, which reached the unprecedented figure of 36%. The steady decline in turnout that had begun several decades earlier continued at the 2022 election, which registered the sharpest fall in Italy’s post-war history (see Chapter 6). The 2022 election thus adds important pieces to the post-2011 political jigsaw puzzle. Its results offer new elements with which to answer the question posed in this chapter, and in general, in this book: in ‘what republic’ does Italy find itself today? Is the Italian political system still embedded in the long phase of transition to a Second Republic—which began in the early 1990s and has perhaps never come to an end? Or is the new phase that began in 2011 leading Italian politics in a new direction?

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Certainly, the protagonists of the Second Republic no longer have the strength they once had. Bipolarity has given way to a much more complex and fluid context. New political actors invoke populist-type formulas different from those of the TV-centred party and communication that was the hallmark of ‘Berlusconism’. The outcomes of the general elections of 2013 and 2018 suggested the beginning of a new phase in the development of the Italian political system, with new actors and dissimilar political dynamics (Bordignon et al., 2018; Ceccarini & Newell, 2019). What does the Italian general election of 2022 add to this picture? The following sections will try to identify the main elements of continuity and change as they emerge from the results of the analyses presented in the chapters to come, focusing on four different dimensions. – – – –

The climate of voting indecision and electoral volatility; The tripolar characteristics of the party system; The role of protest, populism and anti-political actors; The links between the election outcome, the process of government formation and political (in)stability.

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Still Uncertainty and Electoral Volatility?

Uncertainty about the voting decision and the propensity to change one’s choice compared to previous elections were significant features of the 2022 general election. They reflected a trend already apparent at the elections of 2013 and 2018 when voting indecision considerably increased compared to the elections of 2006 and 2008. This feature of voting has become entrenched over time (see Chapter 3). Of course, voters’ indecision is explained, in part, by the peculiarity of this election. The ‘seaside’ election campaign itself was not particularly engaging either offline or online (see Chapters 3 and 4). Unlike in 2018, the electoral formula, the exclusion thresholds, the ballot and the procedure for casting a vote remained unchanged. They remained those established by the Rosatellum. An additional element of uncertainty, however, concerned the reduction in the number of MPs, which led to a redrawing of the constituencies, and thus of both the single-member and multi-member seats to be distributed. These changes also affected the decisions of voters, who in single-member constituencies had to choose among candidates competing within larger territorial

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contexts in comparison with the previous election. This led to further distance and greater detachment between the voter and candidate. A further factor affecting the uncertainty of voting choice has to do with the peculiarities of an unprecedented ‘seaside’ campaign: one that was unusually short and played out in the summer months. The elements mentioned above have to be considered against the background of a longterm trend towards a growth in the proportions of ‘late-deciders’ and ‘last-minute voters’. The dynamics of voting choice show that phenomena such as the erosion of the ‘hard core’ of parties’ support, which appears increasingly ‘soft’, have become established over time, making elections ever more ‘fluid’. Information consumption during the weeks leading up to the election shows that trends observed at previous elections have been crystallised without interruption. Hybrid information consumption practices have now become established. Individual and cultural resources are, as ever, closely linked to voters’ ‘media diets’. At the same time, in the age of digital and hyper-communication, the role of interpersonal, faceto-face communication concerning political issues remains important. Such a complex communications context necessarily draws attention to the effects of the so-called algocracy, and thus, the consequences of phenomena such as echo-chambers and filter bubbles for public debate (see Chapter 3). During the election campaign, digital communication—whose content reverberated around social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, the legacy media and political discussion in social circles—was poorly organised. There was, unlike in 2018, no concentration of online discussion on specific political issues proposed by competing leaders and parties (Chapter 4). Of course, not all of voters’ uncertainty gave rise to last-minute changes in voting intentions. In fact, the election outcome largely confirmed forecasts based on pre-election polls—which in Italy cannot be published over the fifteen days before election day—and on trends that had already emerged during the legislature. At the same time, electoral volatility is another element of continuity with the two previous elections. The results at the aggregate level highlight the further considerable shift in the distribution of power within the party system as compared to the previous election (see Chapter 2). The total volatility index computed by CISE increased compared to the previous election of 2018. The figure of 31.8 makes the 2022 election

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the third most volatile in Italy’s post-war history, after 1994 (39.3) and 2013 (36.7) (Emanuele & Marino, 2022). The fourth highest value is that of 2018 (26.7), confirming that electoral volatility has become a structural feature of the period since 2011, and thus, that voting fluidity is an increasingly natural choice for many voters, reflecting a widespread degree of electoral ‘disloyalty’.

7

Still a Tripolar System?

The 2022 election can be described as a missed opportunity to return to a bipolar system. For months before the vote, there was a lively discussion about the possible formation of a new centre-left coalition: a ‘campo largo’ (‘broad field’) as it had been described by the PD leader, Enrico Letta, who had promoted it. This process appeared to be favoured by the progressive rapprochement between the PD and the M5s, thanks to the progressive turn of the new M5s leader, Giuseppe Conte, and to the parties’ joint participation in the so-called yellow-red or Conte II government (from 2019 to 2021) and subsequently in the Draghi-led government (in 2021 and 2022). The political agenda of the latter government, supported by a very large coalition including the parties of the right (the League and FI), became a point of contention between the PD and the M5s in the runup to the election. The controversial role of the latter in the political events leading to Draghi’s resignation and early elections led to the final rift between Letta and Conte. Moreover, the expectations of victory of the right led to a fragmentation of their centre-left competitors, limiting their ability to stem the right’s success. The PD also suffered from Calenda’s decision of to break his partnership with Letta in favour of an attempt, along with Renzi, to give birth to a centrist electoral cartel inspired by the so-called Draghi agenda. The centre-left coalition, which was no longer ‘broad’ but quite ‘narrow’, was thus formed by the PD together with +Europa (literally, ‘More Europe’; +EU); a joint list fielded by Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left, SI) and the Verdi (Greens), and other minor parties. Calenda and Renzi’s self-styled ‘Third Pole’ achieved a significant result, but not such as to undermine the role of the M5s as the main ‘third’ political bloc. Ultimately, there were four blocs rather than three. Conte’s party retained a dominant role in many areas of southern Italy. The electoral map of the country (Fig. 2, in Chapter 2) is coloured almost

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entirely blue, that is the colour of the right, which managed to win in almost all of the single-member constituencies. Yet, the colour of the M5s (yellow) prevailed in many areas of the South (Fig. 3, in Chapter 2). Thus, there was a sort of continuity with the electoral geography of 2018, yellow and blue being the two colours that also dominated in that election. However, it must also be said that, in 2018, competition between the coalitions had been much more uncertain. The M5s had been in a position to win many constituencies not just in the southern regions. It had been able to extend its dominant role in many areas of the centre and north of the country, as well. Four and half years later, the geographical distribution of the parties’ support was eloquent about the plural character of the Italian electoral landscape. What was striking was the gradual fading of what had been the most politically stable and distinctive area: the so-called red belt. This was the area of central Italy, which centre-left parties had dominated both in the First Republic and in the Second Republic. However, it now appeared decreasingly distinct from the electoral point of view, confirming a trend that had been most acutely apparent at the 2018 election. Moreover, the ‘ideological’ maps displayed in Chapter 5 show that the centre-right actually emerged as a (quite) homogeneous bloc in 2022. This was not the case for the members of the unsuccessful centre-left alliance. Although the main protagonist of Italian ‘tripolarity’ after 2011 (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2018: 8–11; Diamanti, 2013: IX–XXVII), the M5s, had converged somewhat with the centre-left during the eighteenth legislature, it maintained a specific position on relevant issues that structured the political space in the general election (see the next section). Meanwhile, a new would-be (third) pole emerged in the area, but with the aim of occupying the centre of the political space: Calenda and Renzi’s Az-IV cartel. A process of re-bipolarisation of the party system through the formation of a new centre-left had indeed appeared to be at least plausible during the legislature, thanks to the convergence of the PD and M5s. However, in the aftermath of the 2022 general election, this process appeared to be largely incomplete and uncertain in terms of its future developments.

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Protest, Populism and New Political Actors

The 2022 general election took place in the aftermath of an unprecedented and meaningful populist experiment, which followed the electoral success of the League and the M5s in 2018. With that election outcome, convergence between the two parties led to the formation of the self-styled ‘government of change’ (Pasquino, 2019). As mentioned above, these two formations had given political expression to the various resentments—economic, cultural and political—felt by citizens. Votes for them were understood as votes cast by the so-called losers of globalisation: those most affected by globalisation’s economic and cultural consequences. They were both ‘challenger parties’ rewarded by the election results because they opposed the various broad or grand coalition governments that had held office since 2011. The M5s, in particular, had in the past always rejected the idea of being part of a coalition with other political forces. During the eighteenth legislature (2018–2022), however, it had ended-up at one time or another allying itself with almost all of the actors represented in Parliament and notably, first, with the League and then with the PD. Finally, it was part of the very broad coalition that supported the Draghi government, opposed only by Giorgia Meloni’s party and a handful of parliamentarians on the left. The legislature was marked by two crises, different from each other but both traceable to global developments: the COVID pandemic, which saw Italy among the countries most affected by the global contagion, and the war on the EU’s eastern borders following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Consistent with the well-known ‘rally round the flag’ effect, the emergencies arising from these crises and the ensuing sentiment of social anxiety they generated led Italian citizens to draw close around the major national public institutions: in particular, the Conte II government (2019–2021) and, subsequently, the Draghi government (2021–2022). However, those in precarious economic circumstances suffered most from the crises’ consequences, namely: the economic slowdown induced by the pandemic and the impact on the social and productive fabric of the policies aimed at limiting the spread of COVID; the energy price hikes; and the rise in inflation resulting from the war in Ukraine. The latter broke out at the very moment Italy was anticipating possible recovery and the potentially positive effects of the resources delivered by the EU as part of the Next Generation EU plan.

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As was the case in 2018, the vote was largely influenced by fears and anxieties related to global crises. The analyses presented in Chapter 5 confirm that the widespread economic, cultural and political malaise still influenced people’s electoral choices and shaped the space of political competition in 2022. The centre-right and its largest party was able to attract the votes of the ‘losers of globalisation’, especially those who considered themselves to be losers in a cultural sense. Insecurity arising from immigration and Euroscepticism were characterising (and unifying) features of the vote for Giorgia Meloni’s coalition and party. The M5s, on the other hand, attracted significant support from those who most keenly felt the economic malaise and the democratic malaise. Dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in Italy remained a distinctive trait of the M5s electorate. Italian voters were further divided by the controversial choices related to the two new crises which emerged during the legislature: the pandemic and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Both on the restrictions defined by the vaccine passport and on the issue of military aid to Kyiv, M5s and centre-right voters expressed the main reservations, while the PD and Az-IV were on the opposite side. The effects of these new issues, however, seemed not to reflect new cleavages, as they largely aligned with the pre-existing divisions related to global crises (see, again, Chapter 5). Certainly, the 2022 vote once again rewarded the only party that could claim to have always remained in opposition since 2011, namely FdI: the only party, if minor formations are excluded, to have placed itself in opposition to the Draghi government. This explains FdI’s ability to drain the electoral constituencies of the other centre-right parties, in particular the League, but also the M5s (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2021). At the same time, it should be pointed out that, unlike her allies, Giorgia Meloni distinguished herself by taking an explicitly Atlanticist position from the beginning of the Ukrainian emergency. It is also important to stress that the M5s, in the run-up to the election, adopted a more critical stance towards the Draghi government— marking a revival of its attempts to spearhead protest and to defend the economic policies—especially the anti-poverty ‘citizenship income’—of the governments led by its leader, Giuseppe Conte. Thus, the case of M5s confirms that giving voice to protest remains electorally fruitful. It is also worth mentioning that an unusually large number of voters, in 2022, chose the path of abstention, an outcome that has several explanations (Chapter 6), some structural, others linked to

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contingent and unforeseen circumstances. However, a significant number of voters saw this option as a natural ‘choice’, one having to do with democracy itself and a ‘representation gap’ that prevents these voters from finding a party or leader to represent them: a party or a leader with whom they can identify (see Chapter 6).

9 From Voting to Government: A Return to the Second Republic? The factor that marked the most significant element of discontinuity with respect to the 2013–2018 period was, without doubt, the connection between the election outcome and the process of formation of the 68th government in the history of the Italian republic. Only 27 days elapsed between the 25 September vote and the swearing-in of the Meloni cabinet (on 22 October): a period of time whose brevity was explained, at least in part, by the circumstances of emergency. With the deadlines fast approaching for parliamentary approval of the 2023 finance law and for achievement of the goals associated with Next Generation EU financial support, speed was of the essence. The winning coalition itself wanted, from the outset, to convey an impression of efficient political management. To this should be added the fact that the election outcome essentially confirmed what had been analysts’ and pundits’ forecasts (and therefore public expectations) for several months before the vote. The pre-election polls themselves turned out to be particularly accurate. Above all, there was a clear affirmation of the coalition of the right and, within it, of FdI and its leader. All this stood in marked contrast with the nearly 90 days required to give birth to the Conte I government (2018), or the more than 60 days needed to form the Letta government (2013). In the history of the Italian republic, the Meloni executive occupies second place in terms of the speed of its formation. Only the Berlusconi IV government (2008–2011) was formed more quickly. The timing seemed to suggest a return to the political patterns of the Second Republic, after the deviations of the two previous elections. It seemed to revive the narrative of the early 1990s according to which elections should produce a clear outcome: a winning coalition and a leader who becomes the head of government. The Berlusconi-Meloni-Salvini coalition, moreover, coincided with one of the traditional blocs of the Second Republic—one that, beyond the

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partial renaming of its actors and the new internal balance of power, was not so different from that of 1994. The well-known dynamics of personalisation and mediatisation, that had been established since then, allowed the right repeatedly to win Second Republic electoral competitions. Giorgia Meloni, with her popular and media-friendly personal profile, was the leader who most succeeded in turning these tendencies to her advantage. However, the very success of the FdI leader demonstrated that the 2022 elections could not be described as a simple return to the political dynamics preceding 2011. The so-called Second Republic coincided, to a large extent, with Berlusconi’s Italy. Meloni was, first and foremost, the first woman to lead an Italian government: this was a sign of a momentous change. But Meloni was also the first right-wing Prime Minister who was not Berlusconi. Since an alternative and younger leader could not take Berlusconi’s place in a personal party like FI, leadership of the coalition had to be captured from the outside. It was won by a young woman with a very different profile compared to Berlusconi. Meloni represented a ‘new’ personality, at the head of a new party, albeit one with a long and controversial past given its post-fascist ideological and organisational roots. The new (centre)right was therefore in many respects a different political animal to the (centre)right Italy has known since 1994. Nevertheless, the enduring presence of Berlusconi, combined with the long drawn-out race for his succession, meant that the government coalition was potentially unstable. An additional reason for the complex relationships within the new majority lay in the fact that Giorgia Meloni had drained many votes from her allies. This situation has driven Salvini and a number of FI spokespersons, since the election campaign, to emphasise their centrality, concentrating primarily on their personal and party visibility rather than on the coalition they belong to. Moreover, it should be stressed that partial return to the dynamics of the Second Republic could be largely considered an ‘incidental’ fact, one deriving from the strength obtained by one political party over the others, in the specific political circumstances of 2022. All this confirmed, once again, that evolution of the Italian political system proceeds uncertainly and incrementally, without a shared project in the field of institutional reform. Since 2011, the evolution of the political system seems to have been the result, not of a shared project for reform, but rather of leaders’ and parties’ evaluations of what, in the

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INTRODUCTION: ITALIAN VOTERS—WHERE THEY HAVE …

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circumstances, will be to their partisan advantage, without any broader understanding or reflection. This approach generated chaos in 2013 and 2018—chaos that was reflected in the difficulty in forming executives; the need to seek a fresh political formula each time a new government had to be formed; and, ultimately, persistent political instability, as demonstrated by the calling of early elections. In contrast, the 2022 general election has produced a government with a solid majority and a clear leadership that might allow the legislature, at least potentially, to last for five years. However, only the future will tell us whether what has emerged from the 2022 vote is an arrangement that is destined to be consolidated in the near future, or whether it represents just another stage in the development of a political system in which instability and uncertainty have become the norm.

References Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2013). Five stars and a cricket. Beppe Grillo shakes Italian politics. South European Society and Politics, 18(4), 427–449. Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2021). Where has the protest gone? Populist attitudes and electoral flows in Italian political turmoil. Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale – Italian Journal of Electoral Studies, 84(2), 41–64. https:/ /doi.org/10.36253/qoe-10768 Bordignon, F., Ceccarini, L., & Diamanti, I. (2018). Le divergenze parallele. L’Italia: dal voto devoto al voto liquido. Editori Laterza. Ceccarini, L. (2018). Un nuovo cleavage? I perdenti e i vincenti (della globalizzazione). In F. Bordignon, L. Ceccarini, & I. Diamanti (Eds.), Le divergenze parallele (pp. 156–182). Editori Laterza. Ceccarini, L., Diamanti, I., & Lazar, M. (2012). The end of an era: The crumbling of the Italian party system. In A. Bosco & D. McDonnel (Eds.), Italian politics: From Berlusconi to Monti (pp. 57–77). Berghahn Books. Ceccarini, L., & Newell, J. L. (Eds.). (2019). The Italian general election of 2018: Italy in uncharted territory. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-13617-8 De Sio, L. (2018, March 6). Il ritorno del voto di classe, ma al contrario. CISE. Retrieved December 10, 2022 from https://cise.luiss.it/cise/2018/03/06/ il-ritorno-del-voto-di-classe-ma-al-contrario-ovvero-se-il-pd-e-il-partito-delleelite/ Diamanti, I. (2013). 2013: il Paese delle minoranze in-comunicanti. In I. Diamanti, F. Bordignon, & L. Ceccarini (Eds.), Un salto nel voto. Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi (pp. IX–XXVII). Editori Laterza.

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Emanuele, V., & Marino, B. (2022, September 26). Volatilità elettorale sopra i 30 punti: sistema partitico instabile per la terza elezione di fila. CISE. Retrieved December 15, 2022 from https://cise.luiss.it/cise/2022/09/26/ volatilita-elettorale-sopra-i-30-punti-sistema-partitico-instabile-per-la-terza-ele zione-di-fila/ Galli, G. (1966). Il bipartitismo imperfetto. Il Mulino. Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution. Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton University Press. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2008). West European politics in the age of globalization. Cambridge University Press. Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the void: The hollowing of western democracy. Verso. Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge University Press. Newell, J. L. (2021). Italy’s contemporary politics. Routledge. https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9781003041900 Newell, J. L., & Ceccarini, L. (2019). Conclusion: Italy in uncharted territory— Towards a new era of uncertainty. In L. Ceccarini & J. L. Newell (Eds.), The Italian general election of 2018: Italy in uncharted territory (pp. 317–329). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13617-8_14 Pasquino, G. (2019). The formation of the government. In L. Ceccarini & J. L. Newell (Eds.), The Italian general election of 2018: Italy in uncharted territory (pp. 297–315). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/9783-030-13617-8_13 Poguntke, T., & Webb, P. (Eds.). (2007). The presidentialization of politics: A comparative study of modern democracies. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Outcome: Electoral Trends and the Geopolitics of Voting Elisa Lello , James L. Newell , and Fabio Turato

Abstract This chapter explains the outcome of the 2022 Italian general election. The analysis considers the various parties that took part in the competition, briefly describing their electoral performances at the elections of the recent past. The votes won by the coalitions and the principal parties are compared with their performances at the earlier elections with the objective of describing the changes in their support. In particular, the outstanding success of one of the right-wing parties, Fratelli d’Italia, is highlighted, together with the fact that its leader became the first female head of government in Italy’s history. The election result is also analysed in terms of volatility and the disproportionality resulting from the election

E. Lello · J. L. Newell (B) · F. Turato Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino PU, Italy e-mail: [email protected] E. Lello e-mail: [email protected] F. Turato e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_2

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law currently in force: the so-called Rosatellum. The discussion of voters’ choices is then extended to include a discussion of the geographical distribution of the vote and the distribution of the vote by a number of socio-demographic characteristics. The analysis shows important elements of difference and others of continuity with regard to both the geography and sociology of the vote compared to elections in the recent past. Keywords Geopolitics · Territory · Mainstream/anti-establishment cleavage · Left/right cleavage · Electoral geography · Socio-demographic profile of electors

1

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding of the 2022 election outcome. Elections represent crucial moments in the political and social life of a country. Changes in voting behaviour, both in terms of the factors determining choices and in terms of voting distributions, speak to the transformations affecting not only the political and party systems, but also the society and the political culture of a community. From this point of view, Italy represents an interesting case when it comes to studying the relationship between society and politics (Bellucci & Segatti, 2010; Diamanti, 2003). Indeed, the relationship between the two was for long reflected in the country’s political geography and in the long-standing presence in specific regions of territoriallybased political subcultures, shoring up support for the parties representing the two main political traditions of Italy’s republican history. One of these was the Catholic tradition, represented by the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats, DC) and the other the left-wing tradition whose principal representative was the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party, PCI). However, the progressive weakening of this connection revealed profound social changes in terms of citizens’ political outlooks, of the role of class differences and of the significance of the Catholic identity in citizens’ voting choices.

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THE OUTCOME: ELECTORAL TRENDS …

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The processes of globalisation and their consequences, the crisis of representative democracy and of its main protagonists, above all the political parties, have increasingly affected the most recent trends in voting behaviour. Moreover, domestic events marking republican Italy’s recent history, such as Tangentopoli (‘Bribe City’), have redefined the significance of voting itself, rendering it decreasingly the expression of a sense of belonging and increasingly a rational choice. The consequence has been the emergence of an increasingly dynamic and competitive electoral market. Mistrust of politics, social anxiety induced by the fears aroused by global society and the way it has been interpreted by populist politicians have helped to increase electoral volatility and protest voting leading to the emergence of new parties and electoral coalitions at each election. The distribution of support has therefore changed massively from one election to the next. If these have been features of Italy’s electoral history for the last thirty years, then they were also apparent at the election of 2022. In order to consider this election from the perspective outlined above, the first section discusses the competing coalitions and parties from the point of view of their history, ideological orientations and electoral performances. Then, it focuses on the election outcome, comparing it with the outcomes of previous elections and tracing the rises and falls in support for the various competing formations. Subsequently, in the second section, the result of the elections is analysed in terms of volatility and the disproportionality produced by the electoral system currently in force: the so-called Rosatellum. In addition, we extend the discussion of the decisions of voters by paying some attention to the geography of the outcome and to the role of voters’ socio-demographic characteristics in producing it. Thus, in Sect. 3, we describe, against the background of recent and not-so-recent changes in the territorial distribution of party support, what the electoral map looked like in 2022. Then, in Sect. 4, we describe the distribution of party support by gender, age, education and occupation. The final section concludes.

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2 The Parties, Electoral Coalitions and Outcomes In the first place, voters were faced with a choice of essentially four line-ups, which between them took 93.1% of the vote (Fig. 1). These were, first, a coalition of the right, consisting of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) and Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League), plus a minor formation, Noi Moderati (‘We Moderates’), which together took 43.8% of the vote (44.0% in the Senate contest) to win overall seat majorities in both branches of the legislature (that is, 237 of 400 in the case of the Chamber; 115 of 200 in the case of the Senate). Opposing them were, first, the coalition of the centre-left which took 26.1%, representing 7.3 million votes. The largest component of this coalition by far was the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD), which won around 5.3 million votes: 19.1% of the valid votes cast. This party contested the election in alliance with three very minor formations: an alliance of the Verdi (Greens) and the Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left, SI) which took 3.6%; +Europa (‘More Europe’, +EU) with 2.8% and Impegno Civico (‘Civic Commitment’, IC): 0.6%. Also opposed to the right was the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) which won 15.4% of the valid votes cast, representing

FdI

-5,9

(-2.318.739) (-3.234.682)

-8,6

FI Lega

Centre-Right coalition (-805.716)

PD PD

(-168.748)

CL coalition Centre-Left coalition

(-6.398.094) -17,3

21,6 (+5.872.967)

FdI

CR coalition 6,8

(+147.899)

0,9 3,2

M5S

Fig. 1 Results of the Italian general election of 2022: differences as compared to the election of 2018—Chamber of Deputies (% variations; absolute variations in parentheses) (Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior)

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THE OUTCOME: ELECTORAL TRENDS …

27

the support of 4.3 million electors. This party, formed by a comedian by the name of Beppe Grillo, had made its debut on the national stage in 2013 as a (digital) populist party wining 25.6% of the vote. Its support grew at the subsequent election in 2018, when it took 32.7%. During the initial period of its development, the party steadfastly rejected any and all attempts to define it in left–right terms. Its electoral base changed over time: those among its voters refusing to locate themselves on the left– right spectrum remained a significant proportion while the proportion of those locating themselves on the right declined. On the basis of its ideological orientations, the party shifted slightly towards the left in terms of the political and electoral space defined and discussed in Chapter 5. In terms of its policy platform, and in terms of the policies its leaders implemented when it was in government, the M5s sought to orient its actions to the needs of the ‘left behind’: those who in recent years have been most negatively affected by the consequences of the processes of globalisation and international crises. In 2022, in order to compete effectively, it sought to defend its flagship policy measure, the anti-poverty reddito di cittadinanza (‘citizenship income’). The centre ground, between the PD and the right, was occupied by the fourth formation (calling itself the ‘third pole’): an alliance between Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva (IV) and Carlo Calenda’s Azione (‘Action’) which took 7.8% of the vote, representing the support of around 2.2 million electors. Most importantly, the combined vote share received by the three formations opposed to the right, at 49.4%, far exceeded the share of the latter (43.8%). Therefore, a significant consideration when it comes to understanding the election outcome is why the three formations were unable to coalesce. Though we cannot of course assume that all those who voted for one or the other of them separately would necessarily have remained on side had they been able to combine, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the right won in 2022 almost by default, and would probably have been prevented from doing so had its opponents succeeded in cooperating. 2.1

The Centre-Right Coalition

Some clues as to an answer to the question posed above—i.e. why opponents of the right-wing coalition failed to cooperate—can be had by considering the parties’ and coalitions’ organisational and ideological backgrounds in more detail—beginning with FdI whose success in

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E. LELLO ET AL.

achieving 26.0% of the vote (as compared with the 4.3% it had won in 2018) was the most notable result of the election (Fig. 1). The party was one whose deepest ideological and organisational roots could be traced back to the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement, MSI), commonly referred to as a ‘post-fascist’ party. The MSI had embraced a right-wing perspective of a so-called European kind, under its leader, Gianfranco Fini, who had changed the party’s name to Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance, AN) in 1995. This party then merged with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, giving life to the Popolo della libertà (People of Freedom, Pdl) in 2009. Giorgia Meloni left this party in 2012 to establish FdI, having remained its leader since it first emerged, as well as having then become the leader of the Conservative group in the European Parliament. Meloni’s own political views were clear from the proposals she presented to Parliament in 2018 concerning rejection of the supremacy of EU law and plans for a presidential republic—while xenophobia and deep social conservatism were central to her party’s ideological profile. Public debate in the run-up to the election was to a significant extent focussed on the issue of the party’s ideology, leading to a high degree of polarisation between the various forces in contention. In terms of voters’ opinions, the survey carried out by the LaPolis electoral observatory revealed that 29% perceived Giorgia Meloni as a danger to democracy while the remainder thought that Italian democracy rested on solid ground and ran no risks in this respect. FdI’s main allies, as we have seen, were, first, Matteo Salvini’s League, an outgrowth of the Lega Nord (Northern League, NL) of the 1990s: a populist party that had campaigned against ‘Roma ladrona’ (‘thieving Rome’), drawing on the profound economic and social divides separating Northern and Southern Italy, for Northern regional autonomy (and occasionally, outright secession). In 2013, when Salvini had taken over the reins of the party, he had sought to extract it from its Northern ghetto, fielding candidates throughout the country and turning the NL into an anti-migrant, anti-European party by shifting its constituency and the target of its populist orientation from Northerners to Italians generally, and from the established parties in Rome to the so-called bureaucrats in Brussels. At the 2018 election, the new strategy had gifted the party an unprecedented 17.4% of the vote, which Salvini had taken to an all-time high of 34.3% at the European elections the year after—a share that had then gradually dwindled over the subsequent months after Salvini had

2

THE OUTCOME: ELECTORAL TRENDS …

29

tried and failed to capitalise on his party’s support by provoking fresh elections, and after the arrival of COVID-19 had placed populism and anti-Europeanism on the back foot as voters looked to mainstream parties and the EU for protection. The League’s dramatic rise and equally dramatic fall (to 8.8% at the 2022 election; Table 1 and Fig. 1) pointed to two significant features of the political context in 2022. First, by the time the election was held, it had become common for parties and leaders to experience explosive growth only then to crash and burn shortly thereafter. This was because voters had essentially been politically orphaned by the disintegration or transformation of the traditional parties of government and opposition that had been the consequence of the great Tangentopoli corruption scandal of the early 1990s. They were volatile in their voting habits and by and large unattached to any particular party (see Chapter 3). Consequently, by 2022, sudden rises and dramatic falls of parties and leaders expressed their abilities to pull in large numbers of unattached voters behind them on the basis of unrealistic promises of change and renewal only then to lose them as disappointment and resentment set in. This had been the fate of Silvio Berlusconi in 2011 following the sudden emergence of his FI in 1994. It had been the fate of Matteo Renzi after he had taken over the reins of the PD in 2013 and led it to an unprecedented 40.8% at the European election of 2014. It was the fate of the M5s whose vote share in 2022 (15.4%) was less than half what it had been in 2018 (32.7%). Second, though the coalition of the right as a whole took a somewhat larger share of the vote in 2022 than in 2018 (when it took 37.0%), its growth could not really be described as dramatic. This was because FdI’s growth was balanced by the decline in support for both the League and FI (down from 14.0% to 8.1%), from which most of the former party’s growth derived; and in terms of absolute numbers—around 12 million— the right’s vote was—thanks to the dramatic decline in turnout—down from 72.9% to 63.9%—essentially static. The election therefore confirmed that the third main component of the right—Berlusconi’s FI—had essentially been reduced to the small change of Italian politics. Having emerged dramatically in 1994 as a ‘personal party’ (Calise, 2000)—one with little purpose other than to further the political ambitions of its founder and ‘owner’—it too was a populist party whose initial fortunes were built on the success with which its leader was able to sell himself as a ‘man of the people’ and thereby convince voters of

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E. LELLO ET AL.

Table 1 2022 Italian general election results: votes and seats in the Chamber of Deputies Italy (excluding Aosta Valley) %

Votes

League

8.8

2,464,005

Seats 23

Forza Italia (FI)

8.1

2,278,217

22

Brothers of Italy (FdI)

26.0

7,302,517

69

We Moderates (NM)

1

255,505

--

43.8

12,300,244

235

Democratic Party (PD)

19.1

5,356,180

57

More Europe (+EU)

2.8

793,961

Green-Left Alliance (VS)

3.6

Civic Commitment (IC)

0.6

CENTRE LEFT

Aosta Valley a

Overseas

%

Votes

Seats

29.8 e

16,016 e

--

%

Votes

Seats

26 d

281,949 d

2

--

--

--

26

281,949

2

29.8

16,016

--

38.6 c

20,763 c

1 28.2

305,759

4

--

--

--

--

2.7

29,971

--

1,018,669

11

--

--

--

4.8

52,994

--

169,165

--

--

--

--

1.0

11,590

--

26.1

7,337,975

80

38.6

20,763

1

--

--

4

10.8 b

5,841 b

--

Five-Star Movement (M5S)

15.4

4,333,972

51

Azione-Italia Viva (Az-IV)

7.8

2,186,747

21

c

c

c

Italexit – For Italy (IE)

1.9

534,579

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

Popular Union (UP)

1.4

402,987

--

2.5

1,375

--

--

--

--

Sovereign and Popular Italy (ISP)

1.2

348,097

--

4.2

2,302

--

--

--

--

South Calls North (SCN)

0.8

212,685

1

--

--

--

--

--

--

SVP - PATT

0.4

117,010

3

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

13.0

141,356

1

--

--

--

--

--

--

6.7

73,241

--

1.1

313,589

--

14.1

7,449

--

3.5

33,606

--

100.0

28,087,885

391

100.0

53,746

1

100.0

1,084,303

8

CENTRE RIGHT Vallée d'Aoste (coalition)

Open Aosta Valley

Associative Movement Italians Abroad (MAIE) South American Union of Italian Emigrants (USEI) Other OVERALL TOTAL

8.6

93,338

1

5.5

60,499

--

a Sum

of single-member and multi-member seats b In Aosta Valley, Open Aosta Valley includes the M5s, the Italian Left, Democratic Area, ADU c In Aosta Valley, Vallée d'Aoste - Autonomie Progrès Fédéralisme includes the Third Pole, the PD, Union Valdotaine, Alliance Valdotaine, Vallée d'Aoste Unie, Alpine Star d In the foreign constituency the League, FI and FdI presented a joint, single list e In Aosta Valley, the centre-right fielded a single list including FdI, the League, FI, and NM.

Source: LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior

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THE OUTCOME: ELECTORAL TRENDS …

31

his unique ability to bring about political renewal by standing up for their interests against those of rapacious elites. But by 2011—when he lost the premiership under pressures arising from the 2008 financial crash and the subsequent Eurozone crisis—voters had given Berlusconi three goes at the helm of government; his shine, at aged 75, had begun to fade, and he had come widely to be perceived as a part of the political establishment he had initially railed against. From then on, where he had once set the agenda of Italian politics,1 his role was increasingly confined to reacting to political agendas set by others. From then on, therefore—by when the mantle of anti-establishment tribune of the people had been stolen from him, notably by the M5s—he had attempted to distinguish himself, and so further his and his party’s cause, by a combination of studied moderation and not very successful attempts—given the numerous allegations of corruption and false accounting made against him—to play the role of the wise elder statesman. The distinguishing characteristics of the main components of the right provide the clue to their cohesion. Since they each appealed to that specific variety of right-wing sentiment—nostalgia and social conservatism in the case of FdI; xenophobia and anti-immigration in the case of the League; moderation in the case of Berlusconi—the others struggled to appeal to, their emphases on what set them apart from each other, paradoxically, held them together. So, though they not infrequently engaged in high-profile conflicts with each other, none ever seriously entertained the possibility that it would not cooperate with the others, electorally, in coalition. This explains the extraordinary circumstance that though FdI remained in opposition permanently from 2018—a significant factor in its growth—while the League was part of two of the three governments in office during the legislature (Conte I and Draghi) and FI of one (Draghi)—this never placed in doubt the likelihood of their cooperating in 2022.

1 To the extent that his role in politics and the conflict of interests arising from his position both as prime minister and as owner of the country’s largest private TV network had become the political cleavage across which party competition took place.

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2.2

The Centre-Left Coalition

The situation on the left could not have been more different. Here, the main player, as we have seen, was the PD. A party that had come into existence in 2007 as an amalgamation of former Communists and left-leaning ex-Christian Democrats—reflecting the ‘historic compromise’ attempted by Enrico Berlinguer and Aldo Moro in the 1970s in a context of political and economic emergency—it had never succeeded in developing a clear ideology for itself. As a party of the left, it might have been expected, with the end of Communism, to have embraced social democracy, but this was effectively rendered impossible by the fact that both the PCI and the DC had defined themselves as alternatives to social democracy. Consequently, the PD from the outset sought to go beyond what its founders considered to be outdated twentieth-century ideologies with all the difficulties that this entailed. It meant that it lacked many principles that could guide policy making; that it struggled to make clear to voters its vision for society; that it was unable to set the political agenda as opposed to being obliged constantly to react to agendas set by others; that it struggled to cultivate the support of core voters willing to support it through thick and thin. In government permanently throughout the decade leading up to the 2022 election (save from during the brief, Conte I government), though constantly dependent on the support of its governing allies, it seemed to many to have largely given up attempting to champion traditional left-wing causes such as economic equality. And while—and perhaps because—it remained visibly committed to the cause of social equality—in terms of matters such as the rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, etc.—its support came to be drawn increasingly from among the so-called winners of globalisation (Kriesi et al., 2006) and decreasingly from globalisation’s losers (see Chapter 1 and 5). Its stance at the 2022 election was, therefore, no surprise; for it went into the election rejecting an alliance with the M5s and determined to stand up for what had come to be called ‘the Draghi agenda’. This was ill-defined to say the least. But essentially it implied wholehearted support for the outgoing prime minister, the former European Central Bank governor, Mario Draghi, and the embrace of a (paradoxically highly ideological) technocratic approach to politics. That is, one denying that

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33

policy making is about the reconciliation of conflicting interests and therefore inescapably requires making normative decisions, claiming, rather, that it involves mainly the resolution of ‘problems’. The PD might have used its participation in the Conte II government from September 2019 to rebuild its declining fortunes. This was a government that had to its credit the management, perceived as competent by many, of COVID-19 and a—if not the—leading role in development of the EU’s ground-breaking response to the pandemic in the form of ‘Next Generation EU’. The government, however, fell victim to the political ambitions of Matteo Renzi who had abandoned the PD in September 2019 to form yet another personal party—IV—whose support in Parliament was decisive for the maintenance of the government’s majority. The government’s replacement by a national unity government led by Draghi, one involving all the forces represented in Parliament except for FdI and a handful of parliamentarians on the left, by its nature entailed the effective suspension of ‘normal’ political competition. It obliged the PD to defend the government while placing its opponents on the right in the enviable position of being able to appeal, without fear of contradiction, both to those supporting the government and to those opposed to Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The government had remained in office until July 2022, when the centrifugal pressures of the approaching election, which had to take place in any event by the spring of 2023, had led Draghi to resign. The Fivestar Movement’s abstention in a confidence vote on 20 July, Draghi’s resignation and the President’s announcement that Parliament would be dissolved and elections held before the end of September led PD leader, Enrico Letta, to announce that he would no longer seek to defeat the right through the construction of a campo largo (‘broad field’) based mainly on an alliance with the M5s: that the latter’s rejection of ‘the Draghi agenda’ meant that it was no longer acceptable as a coalition partner. Thus, it was that the forces opposed to the right went into the election campaign hopelessly divided, so that the result was widely understood as a foregone conclusion from the start. Thus, it was that turnout underwent a dramatic decline—the largest decline in Italy’s post-war history—and thus, it was that the campaign itself was essentially a lacklustre affair that aroused little enthusiasm in any quarter.

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The M5s was left to occupy political ground largely vacated by the PD and thereby to defy earlier predictions that its participation in government—permanently since 2018—by destroying its anti-establishment profile, would essentially destroy it too. Speaking up more clearly than the PD for the interests of the marginalised, the underprivileged and those struggling with the economic fall-out from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, under the popular former Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, it lost less than had been widely predicted. Meanwhile, Azione and IV confirmed their strategy of positioning themselves in between the centre-left and centre-right so capitalising on their advantageous position. Thus, it was that Calenda, having initially agreed to contest the election in alliance with the PD, then changed his mind and went into the campaign independently, though in harness with Renzi as the other centrist, the two clearly hoping that they might thereby garner support sufficiently large as to make them influential in the new Parliament, especially if tensions among the governing parties at some stage made their support essential in the passage of legislation.

3

Disproportionality, Electoral Volatility and Protest Voting

The system used for converting the given distribution of votes into a corresponding distribution of seats—the so-called Rosatellum—is described in Chapter 1. In this part of the chapter we focus on the effect of this system on the disproportion between votes cast and seats allocated, and the way this disproportion differed from that apparent at previous elections. One commonly used measure of this disproportionality is the so-called Gallagher index (Lsq), after Michael Gallagher (1991), the political scientist who created it. It varies between 0 and 100 and is calculated as the square root of half the sum of the squares of the differences in the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats received by each of the formations contesting the election in question. Thus / / Σ Lsq = 1 2 (Vi − Si )2

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Applying the formula to the results for the two main coalitions, M5s, AzIV and ‘others’ in 20222 gives a result of 12.2—as compared to 5.7 for the election five years previously3 before the number of parliamentarians was reduced. More straightforwardly, we may note that in 2022 the right secured ample seat majorities (of 59.3% and 57.5%) in both the Chamber and the Senate despite winning a minority of votes in each case. This provided the basis for fears expressed prior to the election that the combination of the electoral system and the 2020 reform risked having the effect of enabling the parties of the right to alter the Constitution on the strength of their own votes alone while avoiding the checks on untrammelled power embodied in the Constitution’s article 138 (see Chapter 1, note 2). Though this outcome was, in the event, avoided, it had come to seem the more likely once it had become clear, early on in the campaign, that there was no chance of the right’s opponents being able to cooperate with one another. And indeed, the actual impact of this inability, given the electoral system, was thrown into sharp relief by the results in the single-member constituencies almost all of which (i.e. 121 of 147 or 82.3% in the case of the Chamber; 59 of 74 or 79.7% in the case of the Senate) went to the right. The 2022 election confirmed much of what we have long known about Italian voters (Chiaramonte, 2023), including their growing resentment, disenchantment and dissatisfaction with the political parties and the political process generally. In this context, the decline in turnout was no great surprise—it has fallen at all but two of the elections since the mid-1970s—the unusual size of the decline in the present case almost certainly reflecting the additional impact of the two peculiarities of 2022: the summer campaign and the (perceived) certainty of the outcome. Another indicator of the desire of voters to use the election to express protest—and as such, a further sign of continuity with the past—was the fact that governing parties were punished, and opposition parties rewarded. With the inauguration, in the early 1990s, of party-system bipolarity and the alternation in office of two electoral coalitions, of centre-right and centre-left, each competing for overall majorities, incumbents were never successful in being reconfirmed in office. In 2013, the 2 Excluding the constituency for Italians resident abroad: a very small arena where the party line-ups differed from those for the remainder of Italy. 3 Here, the five groupings used as the basis for the calculation are centre right; centre left; M5s; Liberi e Uguali (‘Free and Equal’, LeU); others.

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M5s was the repository of anti-incumbent protest votes; in 2018, the M5s and the League. In 2022, it was the turn of Giorgia Meloni—while this time the M5s and the League were punished by the very protest they had drawn upon and helped to nurture. A third indicator of growing dissatisfaction is the proportion of consistent voters: those making the same choice as the one they made at the previous election. In 2008, they amounted to 63% of the electorate; 53% in 2013 and 2018; and 46% in 2022 (Chiaramonte, 2023). Reflecting the decline in consistent voting is the growth in aggregate volatility, or the change in the distribution of support between parties from one election to the next, as measured by Pedersen’s (1979) index.4 This rose gradually over the years, increasing ‘from an average of 5.8 between the election pairs of 1953–58 and 1972–76 to an average of 9.1 between 1976–79 and 1987–92’ (Newell, 2000: 20, 2021: 20). It has broken new records since then, with the three highest post-war scores being recorded in 1994 (at 39.3, reflecting the disintegration of the traditional governing parties in the wake of Tangentopoli); in 2013 (at 36.7, reflecting the explosive emergence of the M5s); and in 2022 (at 34.7). Significantly, 2022 registered one of the three highest scores despite the fact that, unlike 1994 and 2013, it did not see the emergence of any significantly sized new parties.

4

The Electoral Geography

In Italy, voting behaviour has traditionally been sharply differentiated according to where the voter lives, and until 2008, the geographical distribution of the vote proved highly resistant to political change. In particular, the central and Northern regions (namely, Emilia Romagna, Toscana, Umbria and the Northern provinces of the Marche) were for long bedrocks of support for parties of the (centre) left. Their borders marked the confines of the so-called red belt where since the end of the War, the PCI had had its strongholds with solid majorities in most local and provincial (and from 1970, regional) administrations (Diamanti, 2003; Ramella, 2005). 4 This is calculated as the sum of the absolute values of all gains and losses by parties competing at an election, divided by two. The resulting index varies between 0 (meaning that no parties gained and therefore none lost votes either) and 100 (meaning that all parties from the last election received zero votes at the current one).

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Despite the profound transformations implied by the transition from the First to the Second Republic in 1993 and 1994, the PCI’s ‘successor parties’5 managed to maintain high levels of support in these regions. The reasons for this continuity are related to the interventionist—and integrative, rather than aggregative (Messina, 2001)—styles of government adopted by left-wing local administrations in these areas: styles of government capable of regulating local development and producing widespread well-being; high levels of social capital; and satisfactory performances in terms of public services and local welfare (Ramella, 2005). The other traditional local subculture was the former ‘white zone’ (white being the colour of the DC), situated in the North East, with its centre of gravity in Veneto but extending towards the North West of Italy following the most Northern provinces: the pedemontane situated at the foothills of the Alps. The DC’s inability to provide satisfactory responses to the new social demands arising from tumultuous and largely unregulated economic growth6 underlay the political transformation of these areas such that dominance of the DC was replaced by the dominance of the NL (Diamanti, 2003). They have since remained League strongholds, even though they have in recent years been subject to some incursion by the other major centre-right party: FI. The 2013 general election marked an eclipse of party-system bipolarity and with it of the country’s traditional electoral geography. The mainstream parties suffered significant defeats—especially the PD which lost 3,450,000 votes or 7.8 percentage points (pp)—in the face of the explosive emergence of the M5s. The election also marked the beginning of a complex interplay between the traditional left/right cleavage and an emerging one opposing mainstream to anti-establishment parties. However, in 2013, it was still possible to discern, at least partially, the heritage of the traditional political geography. The centre-left coalition won in 39 provinces, once more obtaining its best results in the former ‘red belt’ (although it also suffered its most significant losses in this area). The centre-right coalition led by Berlusconi, conversely, prevailed in a 5 Namely, the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left), which later became Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats) before the merger, in 2007, with former Christian Democrats as described above. 6 Making these areas the main ‘engine’ of the Italian economy following the crisis of the 1980s affecting the former ‘industrial triangle’: the area linking Turin, Milan and Genova.

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large part of the North, while the alliance with minor right-wing parties enabled it to win in many Southern provinces, so that, overall, it won in 48 provinces (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013: 15–18). 21 provinces were conquered by the M5s, which appeared to be a national party rather than one linked to a specific area. The map of electoral geography therefore revealed the existence of three main areas: a ‘pink’ one (where the centre-left had its strongholds); a light-blue one (where the centre-right had its strongholds); and a yellow one (including the remaining areas: areas where the M5s was a significant challenger to the two mainstream coalitions). The 2018 election saw the emergence of a new line dividing the Belpaese. This time, it divided the Northern part of the country from the Southern one (Fig. 2). On the one hand, the M5s further built on and consolidated its 2013 victory by becoming the largest party nationally (increasing its vote share by seven pp to take 32.7%), while its support became less uniformly spread across the national territory, more concentrated in Southern Italy (and in the provinces of Marche along the Adriatic coast). On the other hand, in all of the Northern provinces, and in most of the central ones, the centre-right coalition won, driven forward by the significant growth of the League. Moreover, thanks to Salvini’s nationalist turn described above, the geographical distribution of League support became less uneven as it obtained significant support outside of its traditional strongholds, for instance in the former ‘red belt’ (where it won 18.4%) and even in the Centre-South of Italy (13.2%). The third part of Italy—the ‘pink zone’—was restricted to only seven provinces, which looked more like besieged citadels than strongholds to be used to plan the conquest of support elsewhere in Italy (Bordignon et al., 2018: 19). However, the map of 2018, if constructed on the basis of party (rather than coalition) support (Fig. 3), shows the M5s emerging as largest party in 67 of 105 provinces, painting almost the entire peninsula yellow. The exceptions are most of the Northern provinces (28) where the League is the largest party, and 10 provinces won by the PD (9 within the former ‘red belt’ plus the province of Milan). The case of Milan is worth emphasising since it reflected a growing gap between support for the PD in large urban centres, where it became more attractive, and its support in rural and peripheral areas, where its results were more disappointing: a difference that found further consolidation at the 2019 European election (Bazzoli & Lello, 2022: 672–78). For this reason, the PD was ironically referred to, in media debate, as the ‘partito

2 2018 General Election

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2022 General Election

Fig. 2 First coalition in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano, due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior)

delle ZTL’ (‘party of the pedestrian precincts’), since it became the mostvoted party in the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the downtown areas of large urban centres such as Milan, Turin and Rome (Bordignon et al., 2018). The corresponding maps for 2022 tell a quite different story. The centre-right, driven forward by the tumultuous growth of FdI, emerged as the largest coalition in nearly all Italian provinces (98 out of 105), resulting in a new map, where Italy is nearly all coloured in blue (Fig. 2 in Chap. 5). It was defeated by the centre-left in only four provinces— resulting in a further shrinkage of the ‘pink area’—and by the M5s in three, all located in the South. However, the division between Northern and Southern Italy—and a third, smaller, area made up of the 10 provinces where the PD arrived first—re-emerges if we look at the results for the parties, instead of the coalitions (Fig. 5.3 in Chap. 5). Compared to the coalition-based map of 2013, though, the predominance of the centre-right is greater (it had

40

E. LELLO ET AL. 2018 General Election

2022 General Election

Fig. 3 First party in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano, due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior)

won 68 provinces out of 105), and the yellow area, conversely, is more restricted (it had won 25 provinces, and all of them in the South). FdI, which in 2018 was stronger only in the central and Southern regions, increased its support by more than 20 pp in comparison with that year and was evenly spread in all geopolitical areas. From this point of view, it seems to have successfully inherited the national/nationalist support pursued by the League in 2018. The latter too, however, confirmed the trend towards a de-territorialisation of its support, since it suffered greater losses in its traditional strongholds in the North East (declining by 16 pp, against an average loss of 9 pp nationally), while it held on better in the areas of more recent penetration, especially in the central and Southern regions and in the islands. Today, therefore, there are no longer any major territorial differences in its ability to attract votes: it takes 13.1% in the North East, 7.3% in the pink zone and 6.7% in the Centre-South. The PD, too, seems to have reduced the degree of territorialisation of its support. While in 2013 its share in the pink zone (35.4%) was 10 pp

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higher than its national share (25.4%), today that difference is limited to 6.7 pp. The only party whose support defies this trend towards deterritorialisation is the M5s, which records its heaviest losses in the pink zone as well as in the North East. It also suffers significant losses in the South and islands, where, however, it started from very high levels. Thus, today, it seems to have the profile of a party of the Mezzogiorno, given that its support varies from a minimum of 6% in the North East to 9–11% in the pink area and the North West, rising to 18.6% in the Centre-South and to 30% in the South and islands.

5

Who Voted for Whom

Gender. No relevant differences can be highlighted between men and women, in their voting preferences (Table 2). Despite the new government being the first in Italian history to be led by a woman, support for FdI among women is no larger than among men—on the contrary, there is a slight difference in favour of men, which reflects radical right-wing parties’ support, traditionally stronger among males. Age. Age differences confirm their importance, already seen in recent elections, in explaining voting preferences. Young people (18–29) voted, first, for the M5s (which gained its best results among them and among young adults aged 30–44), followed by FdI (which, however, scored its worst result among them and young adults) and the PD. While, in recent decades, younger cohorts have been known to prefer more extreme parties (mainly for reasons linked to the life cycle: see Diamanti & Ceccarini, 2006), more recent studies have revealed their increasing preference for political actors identified with moderate, centrist positions—parties generally perceived as ‘credible’ owing to their (claimed) technical competence and international prestige (Lello, 2015, 2020). It should come as no surprise, then, that they show up as the strongest supporters of Az-IV and +Europa (+EU; the pro-European, civil-liberties formation led by Emma Bonino). They also express a slight preference for the Green-SI formation, but differences with other cohorts are more limited. In contrast, the cohort of those aged 45–54 has already been previously identified as the angriest cohort, the one which was most dramatically hit by economic crises but also by the lack of policy responses (they largely overlap with the ‘lost generation’, in the words of former Prime Minister Mario Monti: see Lello, 2020).

4 3 5 6 5 3 2 3 3 3 8 2 6

4

8

19 19 19 15 13 12 17 33 21 16 21 10 18

13

16

11

3

6

3 3 4 9 5 2 1 1 1 5 8 1

35

19

30

26 25 28 30 23 17 20 37 25 24 37 13

PD Verdi - +Europa Centre-left Sinistra - IC coalition (total)

5

13

6

8 8 8 5 9 8 11 7 11 7 4 6

6

12

8

9 9 9 9 7 14 8 6 10 9 5 11

11

28

21

26 28 24 16 22 36 29 27 29 26 19 37

22

55

36

44 46 42 30 59 58 50 41 51 43 29 56

FI League FdI Centre-right coalition (total)*

Party support by gender, age, education and occupation, 2022

Men Women Age 18–29 30–44 45–54 55–64 65 and over Level of Low education Medium High Employment Blue-collar workers category Technicians, white-collar employees and managers Self-employed manual workers and professionals Students

ALL Gender

Table 2

17

16

17

15 15 16 21 20 16 17 7 15 16 15 20

18

17

10

8 8 7 14 7 6 7 7 5 9 13 4

100

100

100

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

M5s Azione All - IV

158

321

777

2361 1216 1145 372 587 472 354 576 335 1149 877 247

N

42 E. LELLO ET AL.

14 18 32

0 3 3

1 5 1

15 26 36

11 15 7

12 1 7

32 24 24

55 42 38

FI League FdI Centre-right coalition (total)* 20 26 7

3 3 9

100 100 100

M5s Azione All - IV 168 129 533

N

Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, estimates based on a pooled file of three surveys September–October 2022 (base: 3,320 cases)

Homemakers Unemployed Retired

PD Verdi - +Europa Centre-left Sinistra - IC coalition (total)

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43

44

E. LELLO ET AL.

Not surprisingly, then, this is also the cohort that is most willing to express frustration and protest at the polls, by punishing mainstream, moderate, parties and, conversely, by rewarding more radical (and also right-wing) anti-establishment parties, such as FdI and the League— while the young usually tend to express their anti-establishment feelings through support for the more moderate—and multi-ideological rather than right-wing (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2018)—M5s. Finally, it is, as usual, among the cohort of those aged 65 and over that we find the strongest support for the PD (33% vs. 12% among those aged 45–54). Education. Interesting patterns can be detected through analyses based on education, all the more so when compared to 2013 and 2018. The three major parties of the centre-right coalition, as was already evident at previous general elections, have shares of support that are inversely related to respondents’ levels of education. This may be read as a symptom of their greater capacity to attract the support of the less well-off subaltern classes. However, if we read the table horizontally, instead of vertically, we note that FdI is the first party (by far) among those with a lower and medium (upper secondary school) level of education, while it achieves 19% (after the PD with 21%) among those with a university degree. This confirms the ability of FdI to make itself attractive to different sectors of the electorate, cross-cutting geographical as well as social divides. As for the centrist Az-IV and +EU-IC, they both emerge as more attractive to the most well-educated: an electorate marked by a certain degree of ‘social centrality’ (Milbrath & Goel, 1977) and therefore one whose support for the parties seems consistent with their economically neoliberal platforms. Relevant differences can be detected, over time, in the educational composition of the electorates of the PD and the M5s. The PD, in 2013, emerged as much more attractive to the least welleducated electors (37% vs. 24% among the most well-educated), which was consistent with the age composition of its electorate, since older people have generally experienced shorter educational careers than youngsters. That difference, of 13 pp, was reduced to 8 in 2018. In 2022, it totally disappeared, notwithstanding the fact that the PD’s electorate in 2022 had the same age structure as it had had in 2013 and 2018. This may be read as confirmation of a growing polarisation of the PD electorate. On the one hand, it continues to be highly attractive to older voters, who generally have lower levels of education when compared to the average. On the other hand, as the growing tendency for its support to be concentrated in the wealthiest downtown areas of cities already

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observed in 2018 (and 2019) suggested, it is becoming increasingly attractive to the most socially ‘central’ voters, i.e. to the most well-off among the urban bourgeoisie, and generally to the most advantaged social classes. Something similar, but in the opposite direction, has happened to the M5s. In 2013 and 2018, it was considerably more attractive to the most well-educated. The difference with the least well-educated amounted to 10 pp in 2013, further increasing to 15 pp in 2018. In 2022, no difference is to be found. It seems that, thanks to the huge erosion of its support between 2018 and 2022, the M5s has lost much of its capacity to attract support among the more dynamic social (young, highly educated) sectors as well as among the more dynamic geographical sectors: areas of rapid urban and demographic expansion, in all geopolitical areas but particularly in the former red belt (see Bazzoli & Lello, 2022; Lello & Bazzoli, 2020). Conversely, the increasing importance acquired by social issues, especially the reddito di cittadinanza, in the party’s communication and identity—further stressed during the final weeks of the election campaign— seems to have accelerated this transformation. The M5s now appears more precisely identifiable as the preferred political choice of the (large and increasing) numbers suffering socio-economic marginality. They include the unemployed; the working poor; parts of the middle classes that are experiencing downward social mobility. These are sectors marked by anxiety about the future and in need of more public support and protection, found mostly, but not exclusively, in the Southern regions, thus enabling the M5s to play, at least to some extent, the role that used to be played by parties of the left. Occupation. What we have seen so far finds further confirmation and specification in the analysis carried out by professional category. The M5s, which appeared as a catch-all party in 2018 because of its capacity to attract support in all social and professional categories, emerges from the 2022 election weakened in this respect (as in others), while its ‘transversality’ seems to have been taken over by FdI. The M5s finds greater support among those excluded from the labour market or who occupy the most vulnerable positions within it: the unemployed (26%), followed by blue-collar workers and homemakers (both at 20%). It should be noted, however, that despite relevant losses it retains a significant share of support also among other sectors, such as the employed middle classes, students and the self-employed (entrepreneurs,

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traders, artisans and self-employed professionals). FdI attracts significant support in all professional categories except students (11%). It emerges, however, as especially attractive to blue-collar workers, homemakers and the self-employed (entrepreneurs, traders and artisans). An interesting finding is that, although scoring lower than in other categories, it is the most-voted party even among middle-class employees, who traditionally represent a stronghold of the PD and the centreleft. As for the PD, it confirms its considerable attractiveness to retired people (32%), but also obtains relatively good results among middle-class employees (18%), the unemployed (18%) and students (16%). Nevertheless, if we read the data horizontally, we see that, among the unemployed, the PD occupies third place, far outperformed by both the M5s (26%) and FdI (24%). Finally, students’ voting preferences are quite different when compared to other categories: they supported, first of all, Az-IV (18%) and the M5s (17%), followed by the PD (16%) and, to a lesser extent, +EU-IC, which equalled the score gained by FdI (11%). They also rewarded, more than other categories, the Green-SI formation, even if differences are less pronounced.

6

Conclusion

The 2022 vote underlines the change in the role of anti-establishment populism. Italians rewarded the repositioning of anti-establishment populism engineered by FdI, whose campaign messages carefully emphasised its support for the country’s traditional international ties and alliances. However, it is also possible to see a significant element of continuity between the three most recent Italian general elections. That of 2013 saw the de-structuration of the party system, with the defeat of the mainstream parties and the very strong affirmation of an antiestablishment party: the M5s. The election of 2018 marked a further consolidation of the M5s, and the dramatic growth in support for the League, perceived as anti-establishment thanks to the fact that it had remained in opposition to the grand coalition governments emerging from the 2013 election. In this way, despite being the oldest party among those represented in Parliament, the League succeeded in the arduous task of incorporating an anti-establishment identity into the traditional rightwing offer, thus nurturing those ‘elective affinities’ with the M5s that would make possible the advent of the first Conte government.

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In February 2021, after the fall of the second Conte government, a new ‘national unity’ government was established, this time under the leadership of Mario Draghi. The only party which remained in opposition to the Draghi government was the party that emerged as the winner of the 2022 contest: FdI. In contrast, the M5s, with its dramatic loss of votes, paid the price of its betrayal of its original anti-establishment identity—with its former leader, Luigi Di Maio, appearing as the staunchest defender of the establishment itself during the Draghi government. It is not surprising that IC—the party Di Maio founded after he abandoned the M5s in the summer of 2022—took only 0.6% of the vote. In the interplay between the traditional left/right cleavage, and the emerging one opposing mainstream and anti-establishment parties, then, the latter seems to have remained relevant, while the positions of the parties have changed, along with their capacities to convince voters that they represent genuine alternatives to the ‘establishment’. The traditional left/right cleavage, however, also seems to have retained its importance, at least as far as voters (more than parties) are concerned. This explains their (enduring) unwillingness to move across the boundaries separating the two major coalitions, despite the high rates of electoral mobility observed at both the 2013 and the 2018 general elections (Schadee et al., 2019: 18–20). Moreover, at these elections, voters moving from mainstream to antiestablishment parties did not shift in an undifferentiated manner, but tended to follow distinct tracks, where most left-leaning electors, disappointed with their traditional party, mainly rewarded the party least far away among the anti-establishment parties: the M5s. Meanwhile, those electors disappointed with traditional right-wing parties also tended to converge on the closest anti-establishment party: the League, in 2018, and, probably, FdI in 2022. Even the maps, constructed by taking into account these two distinct flows from mainstream to anti-establishment parties, reveal surprising continuity with the traditional political geography (Lello & Bazzoli, 2020). Rather than having lost their political identities and orientations, electors seem, then, to have increasing difficulty identifying trustworthy political actors from among the traditional political elite (Bazzoli & Lello, 2022). The results of the analyses we have conducted here can be read in the light of this discrepancy. While the traditional right-left cleavage, together with the mainstream-anti-establishment one, retain their importance

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among voters, the latter find it increasingly difficult to identify coherent positions in the political supply, due to the changes and repositioning of the main parties. This is revealed by the new political geography, where nearly all parties have converged towards a de-territorialisation of their support, except for the M5s, which instead tends to concentrate its votes in the Southern regions. It is revealed too by the sociology of the vote, especially as regards the PD and the M5s. The former, struggling to represent its traditional supporters effectively, has continued its shift towards a more socially central electorate, which goes hand in hand with its traditional attractiveness to the elderly, while the M5s has become the preferred choice of those experiencing socio-economic hardship and vulnerability.

References Bazzoli, N., & Lello, E. (2022). The neo-populist surge in Italy between territorial and traditional cleavages. Rural Sociology, 87 , 662–691. Bellucci, P., & Segatti, P. (eds) (2010). Votare in Italia: 1968–2008 dall’appartenenza alla scelta. il Mulino. Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2013). Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi. In I. Diamanti, F. Bordignon, & L. Ceccarini, L. (Eds.), Un salto nel voto. Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi (pp. 4–22). Editori Laterza. Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2018). Towards the 5 star party. Contemporary Italian Politics, 10(4), 346–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2018. 1544351 Bordignon, F., Ceccarini, L., & Diamanti, I. (2018). Le divergenze parallele. L’Italia: dal voto devoto al voto liquido. Editori Laterza. Calise, M. (2000). Il partito personale. Editori Laterza. Chiaramonte, A. (2023). Italy at the polls. Four lessons to learn from the 2022 general election. Contemporary Italian Politics, 14(1), (forthcoming). Diamanti, I. & Ceccarini, L. (2006). Semper fideles? Genere e generazioni politiche al voto. In Itanes (Eds.), Dov’è la vittoria? Il voto del 2006 raccontato dagli italiani (pp. 77–92). Il Mulino. Diamanti, I. (2003). Mappe dell’Italia politica. Bianco, rosso, verde, azzurro… e tricolore. Il Mulino. Gallagher, M. (1991). Proportionality, disproportionality and electoral systems. Electoral Studies, 10(1), 33–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/02613794(91)90004-C Kriesi, H. E., Grande, R. Lachat, M. Dolezal, S. Bornschier, & Timotheos, F. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space:

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Six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research, 45, 921–956. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2006.00644.x Lello, E., & Bazzoli, N. (2020). L’Italia di mezzo tra fratture territoriali e tradizionali. Crisi, continuità e mutamento politico nell’ex Zona Rossa. Polis. Ricerche e studi su società e politica, 35(3), 483–514. https://doi.org/10. 1424/98630 Lello, E. (2015). La triste gioventù. Ritratto politico di una generazione. Maggioli Editore. Lello, E. (2020). Youth and politics in Italy in times of populism. In Bello, B.G., Cuzzocrea, V. & Kazepov, Y. (Eds.), Italian youth in international context. Belonging, constraints and opportunities (pp. 23–40). Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781351039949 Messina, P. (2001). Regolazione politica dello sviluppo locale. Veneto ed Emilia Romagna a confronto. UTET. Milbrath, L. W., & Goel, M. L. (1977). Political participation. Rand McNally. Newell, J. L. (2000). Parties and democracy in Italy. Ashgate. Newell, J. L. (2021). Italy’s contemporary politics. Routledge. Pedersen, M. (1979). The dynamics of European party systems: Changing patterns of electoral volatility. European Journal of Political Research, 7 (1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.1979.tb01267.x Ramella, F. (2005). Cuore rosso? Donzelli Editore. Schadee, H. M. A., Segatti, P., & Vezzoni, C. (2019). L’apocalisse della democrazia italiana: alle origini di due terremoti elettorali. Il Mulino.

CHAPTER 3

Grappling with a Difficult Decision: How Voters Made Their Choices Luigi Ceccarini , James L. Newell , and Fabio Turato

Abstract The timing of the voting decision, the mediatised and socially oriented sources of information drawn upon during the election campaign, and the analysis of undecided voters (i.e. late deciders and last-minute voters) are the main topics covered by this chapter. This sheds light on how the relationship between society and politics, voters and political parties, has been changing over time. The sociodemographic profiles of voters are considered alongside their political orientations and a number of indicators of their political cultural traits. This information makes it possible to outline a model of the timing of the voting choice. The analysis of voters’ behaviour within a hybrid media system offers

L. Ceccarini · J. L. Newell (B) · F. Turato Department of Economics, Society, Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy e-mail: [email protected] L. Ceccarini e-mail: [email protected] F. Turato e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_3

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some clues as to how voters decide. The chapter focusses on the interplay between the legacy media, the Internet and social media, instant messaging platforms and face-to-face interaction where political discussion takes place. This specific type of pre-electoral behaviour provides empirical evidence making it possible to understand better how the interplay affects the timing of the voting decision. Keywords Election campaign · Voters’ ‘media diets’ · Interpersonal political discussion · The Italian general election · Late deciders · Timing of the voting decision

1

Introduction

Elections are decisive moments in the political processes of representative democracies, and once the results are known, they make it possible to understand how the relationship between the social and political systems has evolved, and how the political outlooks of voters have changed. Recent elections have prompted the observation that political behaviour has become increasingly ‘fluid’, no more so than in Italy. The relationship between voters and parties has lost the ‘solidity’ it once had, when the traditional cleavages led to the ‘freezing’ of patterns of behaviour that reproduced themselves over a long period of time. This was a period in which voting was the expression of a political faith rather than a momentary choice that was continuously revisited and called into question at each successive election. The change is closely related to the declining hold of traditional political ideologies. The result has been a decline in the significance of the ‘vote of belonging’, the growth of uncertainty concerning which party to vote for, and, prior to that, uncertainty about whether to go and vote at all. This has given rise to the concept of the ‘intermittent voter’ (Legnante & Segatti, 2001; Mannheimer & Sani, 2001) who, in contrast to the ‘habitual abstainer’, revisits her decision to vote, or not, at each election that comes round. Together, these are a series of long-term trends whose significance has grown with the passage of time. Indeed, popular disenchantment with politics and the political parties is anything but new. The phenomenon of ‘partisan dealignment’ has been debated by political scientists for years

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(Dalton, 1984; Dalton & Wattemberg, 2000). Besides reflecting a change in the nature of the relationship between social and political systems, the phenomenon refers, more specifically, to the decline in the proportion of voters who are certain about which party to vote for. Indeed, over the years, the proportion of undecided voters has grown, as have the differences among them in terms of when they make their decisions (Barisione et al., 2010). The results of the recent Italian general election have marked a further increase in this tendency—an increase in the electoral fluidity that is common among the Western democracies and which has long been apparent in the Italian case (Ceccarini, 2018). The electoral market has become more competitive, or rather more unstable, and has given a wide range of political actors, parties and leaders of the second Republic opportunities to establish themselves and take turns in being in government. The high level of electoral volatility that has been apparent since 1994 (see Chapter 2), the year that symbolised the start of the second Republic (see Chapter 1); the massive changes in support for political parties from one election to the next; the equally massive changes in the degrees of confidence enjoyed by party and government leaders: all these have given us an overview of the dynamics of political change. Even if we confine our attention to just the last three elections, we have witnessed significant changes: the explosive growth of the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) at the election of 2013; its consolidation in 2018 together with the nation-wide success of Salvini’s Lega (League); and the extraordinary result achieved by Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI) in September 2022, at the expense, of its centre-right allies, the League and Forza Italia (FI). All this provides confirmation that the Italian political system is both fluid and in a state of continuous change. In the succession of recent elections, the ways in which voters have framed the choices before them, as well as the competing parties, have significantly shaped the contexts in which the elections have taken place. Given these contexts, the election campaigns and the timing of voters’ decisions have generated increasing interest among students of politics. In the past, during the First Republic, campaigning and strategic communication were of relatively little importance. The political debut of Silvio Berlusconi with his ‘televised party’, in 1994; the development of political marketing; the renewed role of opinion polls in the ‘permanent campaign’ as communication tools; the

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advent of the personalisation of parties; the progressive decline of ideological narratives: all these have redefined the significance of the election campaign, which has acquired an increasingly central role in politics (Legnante & Baldassarri, 2010). The processes of mediatisation and presidentialisation of democratic political systems that have been addressed in the literature (Calise, 2010; Manin, 1997; Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999; Poguntke & Webb, 2005) have over time adapted to the transformations that have taken place in media ecosystems under the pressure of the digital revolution (Calise & Musella, 2019; Gerbaudo, 2019). Political communication during the election campaign has acquired a significance that has grown hand in hand with the growing uncertainty on the part of voters as to which party to vote for. And indecision has become a permanent feature of Italian elections. In the past, research that documented voters’ propensities to change their preferences referred to the phenomenon as ‘electoral mobility’. However, the propensities did not necessarily give rise to actual electoral change: a movement away from the party supported at the previous election. In other words, it was common for there to be ‘mobility without movement’ (Parisi, 1980). Meanwhile, among voters moving, the proportion who switched from left to right or vice versa was always small, usually amounting to no more than one in ten (De Sio, 2008: 59). If anything, voters who switched usually preferred to switch to another party close on the left-right spectrum to the parties they had previously supported. Today, electoral behaviour is much more dynamic. Given the significance of the questions mentioned above, this chapter focusses on the voter in the period leading up to the moment of decision. It analyses the timing of the voting decision in order to understand whether the growing phenomenon of indecision was also apparent at the general election of 2022. It then considers the types of consumption of political information during the campaign. The objective is to understand how Italian voters acquired information in the run-up to the poll and to understand and reflect on how the hybrid media ecosystem, increasingly dominated, as it is, by processes of digitalisation and by media platforms, interacts with processes of interpersonal communication and communication arising from the legacy media.

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55

Structural Indecision

The process of arriving at the voting decision confirms a well-known tendency. In 2006 and 2008, two out of three respondents (66–67%) reported that they had ‘never had any doubts’ about which formation they would vote for. In 2013, this proportion fell to 54%. In 2018, it shrank further, reaching 50%. The last elections saw a further decline—to 45% (Fig. 1). We could refer to these voters as ‘the identified’, as they are without doubts concerning their voting choices. In other words, they reveal that they have very (or at least moderately) strong ties with the party they choose to vote for. However, it is obvious that such identification, which reflects only to a limited extent the traditional sentiment of belonging , has become less widespread over time and currently involves fewer than half of voters. It should also be borne in mind that the decline in these citizens as a percentage of those voting is amplified by the absolute decline in the numbers voting in the first place (see Chapter 2), therefore further reducing their significance. The fact that 45% of voters were ‘without any doubt’ means that more than half of those who went to the polls made their decisions at various times in the period just prior to the election: 26% did so during the campaign period, while 14%—the so-called late deciders—did so around

Fig. 1 When did you decide which party to vote for in the general election? (%; 2006–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

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a week before the poll. However, a not insignificant proportion—15%— made their decision either on the day before the election (4%), or else on election day itself (11%), possibly when they entered the polling booth. These we can refer to as ‘last-minute voters’ (Ceccarini & Diamanti, 2013). They amounted to around 8 or 9% of voters in 2006 and 2008. Their proportion rose to 13% in 2013 and 2018, and it rose further at the election of 2022 to reach 15%, as we have seen. The combined proportion of late deciders and last-minute voters, which we can call ‘latecomers’—the proportion deciding just before the election—reaches 29%, a proportion twice as large as the corresponding proportion for the election of 2006. In other words, almost three out of ten voters made their decisions during the last week of the campaign. Therefore, on the basis that around 28 million valid votes were cast in the domestic arena at the election of September 2022, more than eight million were the product of decisions made in the few days prior to the poll or on the day of the poll itself. There are some noteworthy differences between the late deciders and the last-minute voters: of the former, 64% were uncertain whom to vote for, 15% thought they would abstain and 21% thought they would vote for another party or coalition. In contrast, 50% (−15 percentage points) of last-minute voters were fully undecided about their voting choice. Onethird (32%) did not want to go to the polls, but then they changed minds and went to the polling station to cast a vote. Finally, 18% decided initially to vote for a party or coalition, but in the end did not. These attitudes reflect two interconnected phenomena. a. On the one hand, voting behaviour shows increasing fluidity, a feature that is true of a not insignificant, and growing, proportion of the electorate. One might even suggest, borrowing reflections from the studies of global society (Ritzer & Dean, 2015), that voting behaviour has become gaseous rather than liquid. In that case, there has been a further change of state, to continue with the physical metaphor, in the direction of even weaker, almost aeriform political relations. Consequently, voting behaviour presents itself as changeable, now almost completely free of traditional political identities and their corresponding ties. Class identification or religious orientations are nowhere near as significant in influencing voting behaviour as they were in the past. The voter is no longer encapsulated in the

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traditional, territorially based, political subcultures that had underpinned the traditional geo-political areas into which the country was once divided (see Chapters 2 and 5). Moreover, the individual orientations that underlie voting behaviour have systemic implications. That is, the fluidity of voting means that elections are highly competitive and of uncertain outcome. b. On the other hand, voters’ attitudes reflect the importance of the election campaign in mobilising those voters who are ‘disoriented’ in the twofold sense that they are undecided whom to vote for and bewildered ideologically. That is, parties’ visions no longer have the power to evoke senses of identification among voters to the extent that they once did. The terms left and right are no longer meaningful for nearly three respondents out of ten (28%), who refuse to locate themselves on the left-right spectrum when invited to do so. Last-minute voters in particular are unwilling to locate themselves (35%), reflecting the notable displacement of these voters. In short, over time there has been the increasing consolidation of a sense of uncertainty, one that has become increasingly widespread, regardless of the specific circumstances of each election, following a long-term upward trajectory. In other words, there has been the progressive consolidation of new political and cultural assumptions driving the actions and communication of parties and political representatives.

3

The Soft Underbelly of the Political Parties

At this point, one is driven to ask about the relative proportions of those ‘without any doubt’ among those who voted for each of the parties. The overall average, we have seen, is 45%. The highest proportion, at 56%, is found among M5s voters, followed by Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD) voters (55%) and those who voted for FdI (51%) and for FI (50%): Fig. 2. The League seems to be the party whose voters are least likely to identify with it, the proportion of those ‘without any doubt’ among them being just 37%. This proportion is only slightly more than half what it was at the election of 2013 when the party stood out for having the largest

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56

55 51

50

38

24

M5S

PD

FdI

FI

LEGA

AZ-IV

Fig. 2 Portion of voters of each political party who reported never having had any doubts about their decision to vote for it (%; 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

proportion of ‘hard-core’ supporters among its voters, at 71%. Then, however, the party was still called the Lega Nord (Northern League) and Salvini’s nationalist and sovereigntist turn, with the elimination of ‘Nord’ from the party’s title, was still to come. It should also be borne in mind that as compared to the ‘critical election’ of 2013, the 2022 election saw the Lega attract a million more votes so that in absolute terms the number of voters strongly identified with the party remained more or less the same at around 950,000, these representing the hard-core, blindly faithful voters of the party’s electoral base. The proportion of PD voters closely identifying with it also shrank, declining from 69% in 2013 to 50% in 2022. Given that the numbers voting for the party fell by over three million between these two elections, those closely identifying with the party fell considerably in absolute terms. What is equally interesting is the ‘consolidation’ of the Five-star Movement’s core support. In 2013, the year of its debut on the national political stage, 41% of those voting for it reported never having had any doubts about doing so. At the 2022 election, this proportion rose by 15 percentage points to reach 56%, making the M5s the party with the largest proportion, at least relatively, of voters closely identified with it.

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However, given that Giuseppe Conte’s party lost a considerable number of votes (winning 4.3 million in 2022 as compared with 8.8 million in 2013), in absolute terms, the number of those closely identified with the party went down by around 1.4 million. Half those who voted for FdI (7.3 million) reported that they had never had any doubts about supporting the party. It must be remembered that FdI has grown by a factor of more than ten in less than a decade. At the general election of 2013, it had been unable to win as many as 700,000 votes (or 2% of the valid votes cast). Since then, its support has gradually increased at the expense of the other right-wing parties FdI is allied with, namely the League and FI, which have lost large numbers of voters. At the same time, the proportion of FdI voters strongly identifying with the party has also grown, so that the party and its leaders have been winners in a twofold sense. With regard to the centre parties, namely Azione (Az), led by Carlo Calenda, and Italia Viva (IV), led by Matteo Renzi, given that the alliance between them was formed only a short time before the election, not surprisingly, the proportion, among those voting for it, who never had any doubts about their decision is rather small: 24%. In short, support for the main parties aside from FdI has weakened not only numerically, but also from a qualitative point of view, in terms of the profile of voters supporting them. Over half are only weakly attached to the parties they vote for, which may lead them to defect at subsequent elections. On the other hand, voting ‘against’ political parties is quite widespread and involves around one voter in three. 30% of respondents reported having chosen the party they voted for mainly in order to prevent the victory or to limit the success of some other party or coalition. Meanwhile, 34% wanted to use their vote as a means of expressing protest. Those voters who were the most firmly decided concerning their choices have a very distinct profile. Indecisiveness concerning electoral choice diminishes with advancing age. Thus, while among the young (those aged between 18 and 29) the proportion of those never having had any doubts was 28%, the corresponding proportion among those aged over 54 was 54%. There is a negative correlation with education: the proportion never having had any doubts increases from 36 to 54% as the respondent’s level of education decreases. Homemakers and pensioners are the occupational categories that have the least difficulties in deciding how to vote, with 52 and 53% respectively reporting that they never

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had any doubts about the matter (vs the overall average of 45%). Selfemployed professionals and students (21%) were the categories most likely to have put off the decision, having the largest proportions of ‘last-minute voters’ among them. Voters describing themselves as of the centre-left or the centre are more uncertain: 35 and 38% of them respectively approached the voting decision un-assailed by any doubts as compared with 45% of voters generally. These proportions are significantly lower than the corresponding proportion among voters who place themselves on the right: 65%. These findings highlight that indecisiveness with regard to voting is a characteristic typical of significant portions of the electorate: those with above-average cognitive resources; those who are more demanding of their political representatives among whom, moreover, they have difficulty in finding points of reference they are drawn towards.

4

A Less Engaging Election Campaign

As mentioned, the election campaign and the government crisis that preceded it took place in unusual circumstances. The fact that the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, resigned on 21 July meant that the parties were obliged to conduct a summer campaign when the majority of citizens were on holiday, a period equally unusual from a psychological point of view. It was a moment of ‘collective relaxation’, after a year of work, after the restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the sense of disorientation created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Voters were therefore disengaged and disinclined to participate (see Chapter 4). The campaign could therefore be said to have been held ‘out of season’. It was short and not very engaging—as the record low turnout testified (see Chapter 6). At the same time, election campaigns are also a function of the electoral law in force. The provisions of the rosatellum do nothing to encourage debate among the candidates in the electoral colleges as these have increased in size thanks to the outcome of the 2020 constitutional referendum, resulting in a reduction in the number of parliamentarians, and therefore larger colleges in which the candidates are inevitably further removed from voters (see Chapter 1). Nor were there any real innovations in terms of communication. The young—what one might call the ‘digital’—generation was wooed, by more or less all of the party leaders, with promises of policies in favour of youth. However, the young are a social category that is difficult to

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reach as its members largely feel overlooked by mainstream politicians. It is sufficient to cite the fact that those who live in cities other than those in which they are officially resident—whether for reasons of education or employment—are obliged to return to their places of residence in order to exercise their right to vote as there is no provision for postal voting or for voting in the cities in which they actually live even though they are not, formally, resident there. The Io Voto Fuori Sede (literally: ‘I vote away from home’) campaign, supported by young people and students and sponsored by The Good Lobby organisation, has organised a series of online petitions demanding reform of this area of legislation. Attempts to campaign on TikTok, tried by a number of party leaders as a political marketing tactic, was insufficient to engage young people, as was testified to by the reactions both of young people themselves and of their influencers who defined the party leaders’ posts as ‘cringeworthy’. Policies proposed at the start of the campaign, especially by the PD, such as votes at sixteen or the bonus of e10,000 payable to 18-year-olds as an investment in their future, helping them to meet the costs of education or a work-related activity, were lost sight of as the campaign progressed. The data generated by the LaPolis post-election survey confirm the impression that the campaign was a lacklustre affair, even though it did not pass by entirely unnoticed. Still, there was a decline of ten percentage points in the proportion of citizens who followed the campaign as compared to the previous one, the percentages being 84% in 2022 as compared to 93% in 2018. Moreover, there was a similar decline among abstainers. In 2018, 64% had followed the campaign, whereas in 2022 only 54% claimed to have done so. Given this context, it is not surprising that 73% of voters judged the campaign negatively (with 23% saying that it was aggressive, 28% that it was pointless, 23% that it was boring ), and that only a minority, amounting to not much more than one voter in four (27%), judged it positively (with 13% saying that it was informative, 7% that it was engaging, 7% that it was entertaining ). Young people and students, in particular, stand out for being rather critical. If on the one hand they were slightly more likely than voters generally to find the campaign informative (the percentages being, respectively, 18% and 15% as compared with 13%), then on the other hand, they were also more likely to consider it pointless (the percentages being respectively 33% and 44% as compared with 27% of voters generally).

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5

Talking About Politics

Additional evidence that there was a heightened level of indifference at the latest election is provided by the data concerning political discussions with friends or family during the campaign. This activity, which reflects a certain degree of activism and involvement, was mentioned by 66% of respondents—a proportion that was twelve percentage points lower than the corresponding proportion in 2018 and represented the inversion of what had been a growing trend (Fig. 3). This result is consistent with the diminished level of attention voters paid to the recent campaign: a level of attention that then reverberated on the willingness to participate in political discussions. On the other hand, this type of engagement is driven by political interest and by a minimum level of awareness of political issues. From this perspective, a rather striking finding is one concerning the degree of internal homogeneity of members of the social circles within which political discussions took place. It is worth noting that uniformity of outlooks in the groups concerned was not especially in evidence. In

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75

78 66

2008

2013

2018

2022

Fig. 3 During the election campaign, how frequently did you discuss politics with family or friends? (% ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’, 2008–2022) (Source Postelection poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

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Table 1

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Are the people with whom you talked about politics … (2008–2022) 2022 2018 2013

… people who, mostly, think like you? … think differently from you? … or people around half of whom think like you, the other half thinking differently? Don’t know/No answer Total

2008

34 15 48

37 16 42

45 10 44

28 11 55

4 100

5 100

1 100

5 100

Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

fact, only 34% of respondents reported that most of the people with whom they spoke were people whose political outlooks were like theirs. The corresponding percentage in 2018 was three points higher and eleven points higher at the ‘critical election’ of 2013 (Campus et al., 2015). Homogeneity within social circles therefore seems recently to have declined (Table 1). In the remaining cases, the circumstances were different: 15% talked about politics in contexts in which most people had opinions different from their own and 48% in groups in which around half had similar political outlooks: a proportion that was six percentage points higher than the corresponding percentage for 2018. Together, these data suggest that over six in ten voters interacted in contexts where there was a large proportion of people with political ideas different from their own. In other words, political discussions offline did not appear to have the characteristics of echo-chambers, but rather those of arenas for the potential exchange of ideas. Moreover, as we shall see in the next section, the role of the Internet and of social media as sources of information appeared to be rather limited. This casts doubt on those interpretations that consider the algorithms of artificial intelligence to be drivers of the polarisation of attitudes and the impoverishment of public debate thanks to their effects in creating echo-chambers and filter bubbles . Face-to-face communication therefore continued to play an important role in the formation of opinions at these elections: this is a significant phenomenon, one to which insufficient attention is paid by researchers— who tend to focus instead on the legacy and platform media. However, the information that circulates in the hybrid media ecosystem, thanks to

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the reverberations and interconnections among different types of media, has become a source of stimulation for face-to-face interaction and discussion in citizens’ daily lives (Bentivegna & Boccia Artieri, 2021), and therefore the basis for disintermediated styles of interaction in the run-up to elections (Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995). This type of interaction helps voters to overcome their uncertainty in knowing which party to vote for. It takes place in social settings where— as Paul F. Lazarsfeld pointed out in the 1950s—opinion leaders in the social circles to which voters belong act as mediators between the political information provided through the media system and the individuals belonging to the social circles. This process of mediation thereby helps to create the climate of opinion. Though discussion is often superficial and not infrequently based on stereotypes, it is sometimes also based on information deriving from an amalgamation of diverse sources. The legacy media and the new generation of digital channels are combined, and the information they provide is also filtered through instantaneous messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, so that the citizen is able to ‘get outside the bubble’ (Vaccari & Valeriani, 2021) in which he/she might otherwise have been trapped.

6

The Mosaic of Sources of Information

Political information reaches individuals through a web of distinct sources, present in varying combinations in the media ‘diets’ of individual voters. During the month leading up to the election, citizens were exposed to complex flows of political information through channels, such as television, which remains the most significant as it was the one most frequently used bearing in mind that it both transmits news and provides space for political debates. Talk shows are especially important. In seeking to provide fora for the expression of the main strands of opinion represented in public debate, they have become increasingly hybrid in nature as they often take their cues from the comments of viewers, expressed on line as they are watching the studio discussion (giving rise to the phenomenon of Social TV). As in the past, television comes top of the list of voters’ sources of political information. Besides being their primary source of information, it is the one whose use shows the least variation across social categories— which is hardly surprising given its broad diffusion. Those who reported having used television (‘often’ or ‘sometimes’) to obtain information

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during the election campaign amounted to 84%. However, this is slightly smaller than the corresponding proportions at the elections of 2008 and 2013 when they were 90%. In addition, it should be borne in mind that voters who ‘often’ used television as a source of political information amounted to around 63– 65% at the elections of 2008, 2013 and 2018, whereas the corresponding proportion in 2022 was 55% (Fig. 4). The decline was almost certainly due to the fact that the 2022 campaign took place at the height of summer when citizens are usually at home less often. So, there is little evidence of any sea change with regard to television; nor is it possible to suggest that it is being superseded. Certainly, however, the data do suggest that the medium has less power to engage voters as compared to the recent past, also that they use it less intensively. Confirmation of what we suggested in the previous section concerning the role of face-to-face communication is provided by the fact that voters’ social circles are also important sources of information. Indeed, they are the second most frequently relied upon source, with two-thirds (67%) of respondents reporting having been exposed to information conveyed to them by friends and family. The relevant questionnaire item asked not about whether respondents had discussed politics with friends and family and therefore been active in doing so, but simply about their exposure to sources of political information. It is worth noting that the relevant proportion was slightly higher as compared to the corresponding proportion in 2018 (64%) and thirteen percentage points higher as compared to the corresponding proportions in 2013 and 2008. This means that the voter’s everyday social interactions are significant sources of political information, ones that are combined with media sources. Over half of the respondents (i.e. 54%, a proportion four percentage points lower than the corresponding proportion in 2018) obtained information from newspapers. Such proportion was almost equal to the corresponding proportion for the complex environment of digital platforms (at 55%: three percentage points higher than in 2018) making possible the consultation of web sites and the use of social media to obtain political information. In 2008, 22% of respondents used the Internet to obtain political information, while in 2022 the corresponding proportion was 34 percentage points higher. Therefore, in the space of just a few years, the proportion of voters using media platforms to obtain information has increased from about one in five to over a half.

13

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25

Magazines

n.a. -1

n.a. 1

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37

-1

13

10

Contacted by candidates personally

-2

-1

-7

-9

-14

-22

-15

0

16

-11

0

Fig. 4 In the month before polling day, how often did you receive information about the general election campaign from the following sources? (%, 2008–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

-1

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2

-1

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-3

-2

3

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3

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0

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-4

2013-08

84

Difference 2018-13

2022-18

Total 2022

Sometimes

Contacted by candidates via internet or telephone

Participation in political rallies

Instant messaging apps, Whatsapp or Telegram

29

Leaflets and pamplets

Election manifestos

Radio

Internet websites, social media

Newspapers

Friends, family, colleagues

Television

Often

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Just under a half of respondents used other, more traditional, sources to obtain information: sources such as the radio, election posters conveying party propaganda, or weekly news and political magazines. Like other legacy media, magazines too appear to be less important than in the past—at least those in paper format. The remaining instruments of communication appear to be less important. In particular, it should be pointed out that while political information is also conveyed through instant messaging systems, WhatsApp, Telegram and similar apps were used as information sources by 24% of respondents. This was just two percentage points higher than the corresponding proportion for 2018.1 It seems likely, therefore, that reliance on Internet platforms and instant messaging apps has reached a kind of saturation point—which would explain why the percentages for the most recent elections are similar following the growth registered earlier. Instant messaging is, however, important in the transmission and receipt of political information. Around one voter in four reported having received messages through such channels, and it is likely that they more or less frequently forwarded them to friends through online chat and discussion groups. For messages often include elements of multimedia; are frequently satirical; employ rich imagery and parody—as do memes— giving rise to intricate forms of communication, ones that combine political messaging with informal, light, simple and direct linguistic styles, but ones that often have deeply political meanings. The ‘little message’ has therefore become a central element of political communication and is therefore a more significant form of political engagement than is participation in demonstrations (which at 16% has been in decline since 2018). Of lesser significance (at around 12–14%) are the various forms of contact initiated by candidates whether through face-to-face interaction, the Internet or the telephone. This reflects the fact that the campaign took place more through the media than it did ‘on the ground’, locally.

1 Data concerning the use of instant messaging apps were gathered for the first time in 2018. 5% of respondents had reported having ‘often’ received political information through WhatsApp.

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7 Information Consumption During the Election Campaign Voters’ consumption of information during the campaign provides further evidence concerning their engagement with the election but also provides additional suggestions about how they experience politics. The main sources of information to which voters are exposed can be divided into four different groups2 (Fig. 5). From the data analysis, there emerge the following types of consumers of election information: Tv oriented consumers 34%

Omnivores 24%

Low Tv consumers 18%

Average info-consumers 24%

Fig. 5 Typology of information consumers during the campaign (%, 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

2 The groups have been distinguished on the basis of the results of a cluster analysis based on the following four variables: exposure—often, sometimes, never—to (1) television; (2) newspapers; (3) weeklies; (4) Internet/social media. The questionnaire item is reported in Fig. 4. The analysis was carried out using the Two-Step Cluster Analysis procedure made available as part of SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).

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1. The TV oriented: 34%; 2. Low TV consumers: 18%; 3. The Average info-consumers: 24%; 4. The Omnivores: 24%. Half of the voters (52%) reflect a style of media consumption that is of low intensity and they are divided between the TV oriented (34%) and the Low TV consumers (18%). The remaining half (48%) is divided into two groups of equal size: the ‘Average info-consumers’, which reflect the consumption styles of the average citizen, and the ‘Omnivores’ who in contrast have a very open and active style of information consumption. Those in the first category, the TV oriented, have limited exposure to information sources in general. In 41% of the cases, they ‘often’ use one source only, and in 31% of the cases, the source in question is the television. Thus, we refer to them as the ‘TV oriented’. Their style of information consumption is, therefore, rather simple, despite the fact that it is now much easier than it was even in the recent past, to gain access to a variety of sources. Indeed, thanks to the possibilities made available by the digital age, there are many titles and opportunities to acquire information online, including ones derived from the legacy media such as newspapers, weeklies, the radio or television itself. The latter is now available on demand and through devices other than TV screens, such as smartphones, tablets, notebooks and personal computers. In addition, this group of voters never reads weeklies and two in three of them do not read newspapers. Equally limited is their exposure to information through such legacy media as the radio or through the digital platforms: web sites, social media and instant messaging apps. Of residual significance is the consumption of information deriving from channels most typical of election campaigns such as leaflets, fliers, posters, participation in political rallies, as well as contacts initiated by candidates. The social milieux of everyday life, including family and friendship circles, do not function as sources of information for these respondents who are consequently rather marginal to the processes of communication and who are not very assiduous as consumers of information. The distinctive feature of Low TV consumers is that they do not, generally, use television as a source of information. This is so in 84% of the cases. None of them report having used television ‘often’ in order to follow the election campaign. They obtained information from a combination of other information sources, ones that are used more intensively

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than is the case among voters belonging to the preceding category, even though they show this tendency to a lesser degree than is true of the average citizen. Still, they paid some attention to election propaganda and campaign material. Web-based sources of information, as well as newspapers and weeklies, are used quite frequently and on a par with the frequency with which the average citizen uses these sources. Overall, these voters remain on the margins with respect to information consumption though they have some characteristics that set them apart from the TV oriented. They have a consumption profile that is different both quantitatively (in that it is more intense, more assiduous) and qualitatively (in that television is absent while other sources are used with near average frequency). The remaining half of voters (48%) have consumption styles that are more intense and involve a larger number of more differentiated sources, with obvious differences between the two groups into which they are divided. The common consumers have consumption styles reflecting those of the average voter as given in Table 2. They amount to about a quarter (24%) of the electorate and occupy, in terms of consumption styles, an intermediate position between the infrequent consumers of information and those we have called the omnivores (24%): individuals whose consumption is active and intense. The style of information consumption of this group is such that they are actively exposed to media on all fronts, to both the legacy and the platform media, but including information made available through their friendship groups and campaign propaganda materials.

8

Types of Info-Consumer and Political Cultures

The profiles of these different types of information consumers seem predictable and highlight that cognitive resources and social identities are linked to the ways in which various information sources are used, thereby enabling us to distinguish citizens in terms of the different ways in which they relate to politics. The TV oriented consist of those for whom politics is most likely to be a peripheral concern—and not only (as the group least exposed to flows of communication) as far as the consumption of information is concerned. They are more likely to be found among women (60%), among those

3

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Table 2 Sources of information during the campaign by typology of information consumers (column % replying ‘often’, 2022) Information consumption Infrequent

– – – – – – – – –

Television Internet websites, social media Newspapers Friends, family, colleagues Radio Election manifestos Magazines Leaflets and pamphlets Instant messaging apps, WhatsApp or Telegram – Participation in political rallies – Contacted by candidates via Internet or telephone – Contacted by candidates personally

Total (‘often’)

Average

Omnivores

TV oriented

Low TV

50 8 0 11 11 6 0 4 2

0 24 22 19 11 14 12 10 5

60 26 22 20 18 15 9 9 10

100 64 67 37 37 22 31 16 12

55 28 25 20 19 13 12 9 7

1 1

2 3

5 2

6 6

3 3

1

2

4

5

3

Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

aged 55 and above, among those with middling to low levels of education (58% vs 48%). In terms of socio-economic characteristics, they are present in above-average numbers among homemakers (23% vs 13%), and in numbers above but closer to the average among pensioners and manual workers. They have little interest in politics (37% vs 51%) and are less willing than the average citizen to locate themselves on the left–right spectrum (32% vs 28%). They report being less satisfied than the average with the way democracy works in Italy (39% vs 44%). In addition, they consider the election campaign to have been boring and pointless. They occasionally followed it on television (50% doing so ‘sometimes’ as compared with 30% of voters generally) and they took part in political discussions with friends and family only to a limited extent (with only 21% reporting that they did so ‘often’ as compared with 29% of voters generally).

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Among the ‘TV oriented’ citizens that turned out to vote, there is an above-average proportion of ‘last-minute voters’ (20% vs 15%). Their indecision concerning the voting choice, together with their other characteristics, reflects their detached attitude to politics. Despite making their decisions at the last minute, they nevertheless went to vote in proportions similar to those for citizens generally, thereby showing a commitment to the ritual of voting, probably doing it more out of a sense of civic duty than out of a sense of genuine political involvement and commitment. They gave above-average support to FI. The voters we have called Low TV consumers in contrast have a slightly different profile. They tend to be middle aged—29% (versus 19% of voters generally) are aged between 45 and 54—and to have below-average levels of education. They are slightly more likely to be male than are voters generally (the proportions being 53% vs 48%). Socio-economically, they are not especially distinct, but they are underrepresented among students and overrepresented among the unemployed. The proportion interested in politics is below average (36% as compared with 51% of voters generally) as is the proportion satisfied with the functioning of democracy (34% vs 44%). They are least likely to locate themselves on the left-right spectrum, with 43% (as compared with 28% of voters generally) being unwilling to do so. The proportion discussing politics among friends and family during the campaign is below average and no higher (at 21%) than that of the preceding group. These figures reflect the marginality of the group and it is not surprising that only 57% report having followed the campaign (as compared with 79% of voters generally). It is the group with the lowest turnout (at 53% as compared to 64% for the sample generally). Like the preceding group, above-average proportions vote for FI. In sociodemographic and political cultural terms, the profile of the average users, whose consumption of information reflects that of citizens generally, stands out from the profiles of the preceding groups. They are more likely to be male, young and well-educated. They are overrepresented among students, pensioners and middle-class employees. To an above-average extent, they are unwilling to locate themselves on the leftright spectrum—an unwillingness that reflects an above-average degree of political engagement without any corresponding propensity to identify with one ideological area rather than another. Thus, 63% are interested

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in politics (as compared with 51% of citizens generally) and 54% are satisfied with the functioning of Italian democracy (as compared with 44% of citizens generally). They discuss politics in their social circles to a greater extent than the previous group (27%) and were more likely than voters generally to have followed the campaign (85% as compared to 79% having done so). The group shows the highest level of turnout, testifying to its high level of political and institutional integration. Its votes were dispersed among several of the competing parties, so that it did not have a very distinct political orientation. An above-average proportion of its members (18% vs 14%) made their voting choices just before the election—during the last week of the campaign—while 50% (as compared with 45% of voters generally) reported never having had any doubts about the party they would vote for. With regard to the omnivores, the profile that emerges is very distinct and in sharp contrast to those of the TV oriented and the Low TV consumers, whose consumption of information is less frequent. Indeed, the omnivores can be described as ‘demanding’, or in other words, sophisticated and exacting with regard to politics. They have above-average levels of cognitive resources and this means that they have greater levels of political involvement and efficacy. They are overrepresented among young people and those with high levels of education (where the relevant proportions are 72% as compared with 52% for voters generally). They are equally represented among men and women, underscoring their above-average levels of attention to politics. In terms of employment status, the group has an above-average proportion engaged in the technical professions, or working as employees and functionaries, and is overrepresented among students. It also has the largest proportion (69% as compared to 51% of citizens generally) interested in politics. 92%, as compared to 79% of respondents generally, reported having followed the election campaign but an above-average proportion (i.e. 27% as compared to 22%) criticised it for being aggressive. They discussed politics frequently in their social circles, 48% reporting that they did so ‘often’ as compared with 29% of respondents generally and it is likely that they acted as opinion leaders in the sense described by Lazarsfeld. Turnout among them was high. As well as being more likely than others to be willing to place themselves on the left-right spectrum (with only 14%, as compared to 23% of respondents generally, being unwilling to do so), they were more likely to place themselves on the left or centre-left (as did 45% as compared to 34% of respondents generally).

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They are attentive and well-informed—a sort of civis nobilis —an above-average proportion (35% vs 26%) of whom decided how to vote during the election campaign—which they followed attentively though without leaving their decision until the last minute.

9

Conclusion

Aside from the actual result, the 2022 election reflected a number of long-standing trends in Italian politics. These include the fluid nature of voting behaviour and the fact that voting is increasingly the expression of a choice and decreasingly the expression of a voter’s sense of belonging to a social category or ideological perspective. This is confirmed not only by the indices of volatility and by the vote flows among the parties, phenomena that reflect only one specific aspect of the matter, namely voting. But it is the product of well-established orientations and behaviour, on the part of citizens, ones that reflect their political culture, or in other words, the ways in which they relate to politics. Electoral uncertainty has become one of their distinguishing features. Thus, the voting decision for not inconsiderable proportions of the electorate is increasingly made close to polling day. Voters are not only intermittent, deciding at each election whether to vote or not (and in 2022, large numbers decided not to vote as compared with 2018, see Chapter 6), but they are increasingly undecided about whom to vote for. And when they vote, they at least to some extent vote against rather than for a party or leader (see Chapter 5). This is an issue that touches upon the basic rationale for democratic representation. The main actors performing the function of political mediation, namely the parties, no longer arouse any passion among voters. They are unable to create any senses of identification with them and are viewed with diffidence by the large majority of citizens. The current conjuncture is certainly marked by a high level of (affective) polarisation, but it is a level of polarisation that is not based on any sense of political belonging. On the contrary, electoral volatility arising from electoral uncertainty is a consolidated feature of the Italian political system. Mobility increasingly results in electoral movement—suggesting that voters are constantly searching for something or someone new, such as a strong leader—this because they are disillusioned with the parties and politicians they voted for at the previous election: parties and politicians who, in their turn, have

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become ‘outdated’, negative points of reference to be dropped in favour of new actors. All this takes place in a context in which ideology is unable to provide meaning to individual citizens. Thereby, long-term factors tend to interact with contingent factors, such as those that marked the 2022 election, so rendering each poll a unique historical event. The tendency of Italian governments to be unstable and to struggle to remain in office for entire legislative terms contrasts, in the present case, with the anomalous end of a government led by a technocrat, Mario Draghi, with a high level of international recognition at a particularly delicate moment for Italy and for global society. The collapse of the government was followed by early elections—a circumstance that was incomprehensible for many citizens and observers, given that the legislature would come to its natural end in the spring of 2023 and therefore at a moment of fewer political tensions. Such timing would have enabled a more relaxed approach to a number of institutional activities such as debate and approval of the finance law; achievement, by the end of the year, of the Next Generation EU objectives with a view to obtaining a further tranche of EU funding; the design of measures to combat the energy crisis and households’ economic difficulties due to the rise in inflation in the context of the war in Ukraine. The resulting summer election campaign was not only short and ‘ugly’, as it was called by observers, but it also seemed anomalous. The political climate that took shape failed to arouse any passion on the part of citizens who were struggling with the various crises caused by recent events and with the corresponding consequences for themselves and their families. Worry, uncertainty and anxiety about the future overcame citizens as they returned from their summer holidays. Although the political relevance of election campaigns is now greater than it was in the past, when voters’ orientations were informed by wellestablished certainties, citizens related to the most recent elections with a strong sense of disenchantment. This does not mean that there was no real interest in politics or the election on the part of citizens. Though their outlooks on politics are increasingly ones of detachment, or perhaps resignation, they did discuss politics. Such discussion is a testimony to the fact that what happens in the political sphere engages them and at least to some degree drives them to talk about politics even in groups that are heterogeneous in terms of the views of their members.

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The links between the legacy media, social media and face-to-face discussion suggest that the themes that emerge in a hybrid media system reverberate around the face-to-face interactions taking place in daily life. In short, citizens did not appear to be especially stimulated by political actors or by the messages they sought to convey during the campaign. However, there does exist the potential for a greater degree of civic engagement on the part of citizens—a potential that it is up to the main political actors to intercept and to draw upon with a view to improving the quality of Italian democracy. What emerged strongly at the 2022 election is the tendency for citizens to search constantly, right up to the last minute, for a new political leader in whom to entrust their confidence—a tendency arising from a sense of disorientation concerning politics and political representation. This is what gave Giorgia Meloni her opportunity—this and the fact that throughout the eventful outgoing legislature, she had always remained in opposition, both with regard to the Conte I and II governments and with regard to the Draghi government. Her profile and public image almost certainly made her seem—at least for the 7.3 million out of the 46 million who voted for her—the right person in the circumstances to deal with the expectations and uncertainties of a society tired and afraid of what was taking place both domestically and abroad.

References Barisione, M., Catellani, P., & De Sio, L. (2010). La scelta degli indecisi. In P. Bellucci & P. Segatti (Eds.), Votare in Italia 1968–2008: dall’appartenenza alla scelta (pp. 359–389). Il Mulino. Bentivegna, S., & Boccia Artieri, G. (2021). Voci della democrazia. Il Mulino. Calise, M. (2010). Il partito personale. Editori Laterza. Calise, M., & Musella, F. (2019). Il principe digitale. Editori Laterza. Campus, D., Ceccarini, L., & Vaccari, C. (2015). What a difference a critical election makes: Social networks and political discussion in Italy between 2008 and 2013. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 27 (4), 588–601. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edv045 Ceccarini, L. (2018). Tra (in)decisione di voto e discussione pre-elettorale. In F. Bordignon, L. Ceccarini, & I. Diamanti (Eds.), Le divergenze parallele (pp. 70–89). Editori Laterza. Ceccarini, L., & Diamanti, I. (2013). The election campaign and the “lastminute” deciders. Contemporary Italian Politics, 5(2), 130–148. https://doi. org/10.1080/23248823.2013.812406

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Dalton, R. J. (1984). Cognitive mobilization and partisan dealignment in advanced industrial democracies. The Journal of Politics, 46(1), 264–284. https://doi.org/10.2307/2130444 Dalton, R. J., & Wattemberg, M. P. (Eds.). (2000). Parties without partisans: Political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford University Press. De Sio, L. (2008). Il secondo motore del cambiamento: i flussi elettorali. In Itanes (Eds.), Il ritorno di Berlusconi (pp. 57–70). Il Mulino. Gerbaudo, P. (2019). The digital party. Pluto Press. Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1995). Citizens, politics, and social communication: Information and influence in an election campaign. Cambridge University Press. Legnante, G., & Baldassarri, D. (2010). Campagne elettorali e mediazione sociale: esposizione ai media e relazioni interpersonali. In P. Bellucci & P. Segatti (Eds.), Votare in Italia 1968–2008: dall’appartenenza alla scelta (pp. 249–288). Il Mulino. Legnante, G., & Segatti, P. (2001). L’astensionista intermittente, ovvero quando decidere di votare o meno è lieve come una piuma. Polis, 15(2), 181–202. https://doi.org/10.1424/2887 Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge University Press. Mannheimer, R., & Sani, G. (2001). La conquista degli astenuti. Il Mulino. Mazzoleni, G., & Schulz, W. (1999). Mediatization of politics: A challenge of democracy? Political Communication, 16(3), 247–261. https://doi.org/10. 1080/105846099198613 Parisi, A. M. L. (Eds.). (1980). Mobilità senza movimento. Il Mulino. Poguntke, T., & Webb, P. (Eds.). (2005). The presidentialization of politics: A comparative study of modern democracies. Oxford University Press. Ritzer, G., & Dean, P. (2015). Globalization: A basic text. Wiley. Vaccari, C., & Valeriani, A. (2021). Outside the bubble. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Citizens’ Engagement with the ‘Seaside Campaign’ on Instagram and Facebook Giovanni Boccia Artieri , Fabio Giglietto , and Anna Stanziano

Abstract This chapter outlines the most relevant topics discussed during the campaign on two Italian mainstream social media platforms. The study analyses posts, collected through CrowdTangle, mentioning a set of political keywords published on Facebook Pages/groups and Instagram accounts between 21 July, when Mario Draghi resigned as Prime Minister, and 25 September 2022, the day of the election. A breakout algorithm detector is used to identify peaks in daily engagement, and for each peak, the main topics were identified using LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation). The chapter provides insight into the trends and topics that

G. Boccia Artieri (B) · F. Giglietto · A. Stanziano Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy e-mail: [email protected] F. Giglietto e-mail: [email protected] A. Stanziano e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_4

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were most likely to drive engagement on these platforms during the campaign period. The results of the study may be useful for understanding the role of social media in political communication and for identifying the most effective strategies for reaching and engaging with voters through these channels. Keywords Election campaign · Topic modelling · Italian election · Facebook · Instagram · Social media platform

1

Introduction

Political campaigns are often considered key moments for analysing political communication due to their potential to provide insights into how politicians and other political actors communicate with and seek to influence the public (Benoit, 2007; Denton et al., 2019). Political campaigns offer a unique opportunity to study the effects of different communication strategies on voter attitudes and behaviours and offer a natural laboratory for such research (Ansolabehere et al., 1994). Additionally, the examination of political campaigns can provide valuable insights into the broader political landscape and the ways in which political actors communicate with the public (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Through the study of political campaigns, researchers may gain a more comprehensive understanding of issues and themes relevant to voters, the methods by which political actors communicate with the public and the media’s role in shaping political discourse (Roberts & McCombs, 1994; Voltmer, 2004). Political communication research has traditionally focused on analysing the voices of politicians and candidates themselves, often through the study of legacy media such as press interviews, official marketing material and campaign speeches. With the proliferation of social media, scholars have begun to shift their focus to studying the voices of citizens and other online actors in order to understand the main topics discussed during political campaigns on social media platforms (Wattal et al., 2010). This approach aims to detect the social media agenda of the campaign and provides insight into the broader political landscape and the ways in which political and media actors communicate with the public on social media (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2012; Tucker et al., 2018). Social

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media have also played a role in disintermediation, allowing politicians to bypass traditional gatekeepers and communicate directly with the public (Bruns, 2003; Chadwick, 2009). These studies highlight the importance of social media in shaping political discourse during political campaigns and provide a new perspective on the ways in which politicians and other political actors communicate with and seek to influence the public. There has been a growing body of the literature on the use of social media in political campaigns with a focus on Italian elections. One recent study by Cepernich and Bracciale (2018) investigated the social media communication habits of the main Italian leaders and political parties on Twitter and Facebook during the Italian general election in 2018 and found a significant strengthening of hybrid media campaigning. The relationship between partisanship, polarization and populism (Bobba & Roncarolo, 2018) in the 2018 election is unpacked in a study by Giglietto et al. (2019). Radicioni et al. (2021) mapped the discursive communities that animated the political debate in the run up to the 2018 Italian elections on Twitter. The present study contributes to the research examining the role of social media in political campaigns by analysing the issues and themes relevant to the public during the 2022 Italian elections. To achieve this aim, we analysed political social media posts published on Facebook and Instagram during the two months preceding election day on 25 September 2022. This chapter seeks to address three descriptive questions aimed at providing an overview of the campaign-related posts on social media as provided by citizens active on social media. Against this background, we reconstruct the overall trend of the campaign on Facebook and Instagram by highlighting the most active days in terms of overall social media interaction cumulated. We then focus on the main topics of the campaign, and how they vary during the campaign period. Finally, we identify and describe the main themes and issues discussed during the campaign on Facebook and Instagram, and how they evolved. For this purpose, we constructed a dataset consisting of political posts published on Facebook and Instagram between 21 July (the day the election was called) and 25 September (the day of the election). Posts have been identified as political when mentioning at least one from a set of political keywords (see methodological note). We used CrowdTangle APIs to search for political posts published by all the accounts tracked by the platforms of Facebook and Instagram. The datasets have been cleaned

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by removing lowercase mentions of certain politicians having surnames that are also common Italian words (e.g. Meloni which also means ‘melons’) and posts containing mentions of football and basketball teams while not dealing with politics (‘Lega’ is both the name of a political party and the Italian for ‘league’ so that it can appear in reference to— for example—football/basketball leagues). After the clean-up, the two datasets, respectively, included 571,901 (109,657,040 total interactions) and 28,753 (33,807,978) posts. We then detected 12 peaks for Facebook and 14 peaks for Instagram following a procedure commonly used when analysing posts’ timelines (Giglietto & Lee, 2017) (see methodological note). For each set of posts in a peak, we identified the main topics. We used the topic modelling technique that was performed with the textmineR package. Finally, we performed a qualitative analysis of posts in each peak to reconstruct the main narratives of the political campaign as described in the results section below.

2

Posting over a ‘Seaside Election Campaign’

The period leading up to the 2022 Italian general election has been called a ‘seaside election campaign’ (Panarari, 2022). It was an election campaign marked by speed and brevity (just over two months only), the effect of the unexpected middle-of-the-summer collapse, between 20 and 21 July, of the government of national unity led by Mario Draghi. The fact that the election campaign took place in August meant that social media became major arenas of discussion; for many citizens left the cities to go on vacation, making the period a ‘low season’ from the point of view of television (August is the month with the lowest television audiences [AGCOM, 2022]). To answer our first research question, concerning the overall trend of the campaign on Facebook and Instagram, we observed the daily distribution of the collected posts, as shown in Fig. 1. The first result that emerges from our analysis is that between the two analysed platforms, Facebook is by far the favourite for political discussions, as shown by the number of posts collected. At the same time, however, even though the number of political posts published on Facebook is far higher than the number of political posts published on Instagram, the trend on the two platforms is similar (see Fig. 1). Following an initial peak due to the fall of the government and the consequent beginning of the election campaign

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period, in fact, political discussions on both social media remained stable over time and then grew again in the week of the election. A peculiarity that emerged is the variability of the discussions, with the number of postings being fewer at weekends, especially on Sundays and on public holidays (the day on which the smallest number of posts was recorded is 15 August, a public holiday in Italy).

3

Different Types of Engagement on Instagram and Facebook

Besides the number of posts published daily on the two social media, we also observed users’ social media engagement (or the volume of total interactions generated by a post). Focusing on engagement (Fig. 2), the overall trend of the campaign looks different. For Facebook, the day that registers the largest number of user engagements is that of the fall of the Draghi government (21 July), while in the case of Instagram, the day with the largest volume of engagements is election day. In addition, although there are several peaks in the two analysed months, Facebook shows a decrease in interest by users as the election campaign progresses, while for Instagram, the interest of the public does not seem to diminish. The 12,496 Facebook posts on 21 July generated a total of 3,459,050 interactions; however, the one that gets the most (73,771) concerns the Draghi government crisis and the start of the election campaign: We are at such a low point that the most lucid, most reasonable intervention was made by Lapo Elkann, who is not a politician and has never even wanted to be one. [...] “Congratulations to the genius that sent home the most internationally respected Italian who has tried with all his efforts to help a country devastated by a bunch of buffoons and runaway kids. I’m sorry, but I’m looking forward to the genius” [...].1

Besides the government crisis, the other day that registers strong engagement from the public on Facebook is 23 September, with 14,670 posts and 2,658,220 interactions. In this case, we find both posts in which the various politicians make appeals to citizens to vote and highlight what they consider to be the strengths of their parties, and polemical posts

1 https://www.facebook.com/100044563983825/posts/607155404113254.

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Fig. 1 Political posts published on Facebook and Instagram from 21 July to 25 September 2022

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Fig. 2 Engagement related to political posts published on Facebook and Instagram from 21 July to 25 September 2022

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denouncing the presumed intervention of Europe in the Italian election campaign: Giuseppe Conte moved to tears, live on Canale 5. Conte: “They are waging war on the basic income because we introduced it together with the Five star Movement. To make war on us, they make war on the poor. It’s shameful. [...].2 By voting for Fratelli d’Italia, you will be able to emerge from the voting booth with the pride of knowing that you have not simply chosen the “lesser of two evils”, but that you have chosen a party that has never gone back on its word, and that has always and in any case put Italians first… [...].3 SHAME ON YOU, VON DER LEYEN! [...]It’s crazy. The comments of the President of the European Commission are real THREATS. She should apologize to the Italian people, who are FREE to vote for whoever they want. Especially the Lega. [...].4

On Instagram, on the other hand, 515 posts were published on election day, and these posts resulted in a total of 1,476,986 interactions. Most of these concerned the election itself and the procedures for voting (as in the case of the post that generated the largest number of interactions: 170,195), appeals to citizens to vote, or memes: The election campaign is over. Today we vote, are we ready? Polling stations are open from 7am to 11pm. [...] If you are still undecided, then on our YouTube channel you can find interviews with the party leaders, analysis of the parties’ manifestoes, the history of parties and the story of the most frequently recurring catchphrases in election campaigns. [...].5

In addition to 25 September, there were two more days on which users were particularly engaged on Instagram: 26 August, with 425 posts that generated 1,021,180 interactions, and 8 September, with 610 posts that

2 https://www.facebook.com/356217484478598/posts/4989406047826362. 3 https://www.facebook.com/100044506566624/posts/642626287230918. 4 https://www.facebook.com/100050527747831/posts/628445085516411. 5 https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci7Ax8zp9sE/.

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generated 997,389. In the first case, the posts that stimulated the greatest volume of engagement concerned the election campaign in general: […] Instead of desperate attempts by parties to demonize their opponents, citizens prefer the concrete programmes of those parties that want to revive Italy. We are ready.6

In the second case, however, the event that triggered the greatest volume of engagement was an event of international relevance: the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

4

An Election with No Triggering Events

Examining the moments of maximum engagement on the part of users has made it apparent that this election campaign was not characterized by any specific trigger event, unlike the 2018 election campaign (Bentivegna & Boccia Artieri, 2019). This is confirmed by the topic analysis on both social media. In fact, both on Facebook and on Instagram, most of the discussions concerned the election campaign in general, which is present in all the analysed peaks (see the column, ‘N Topics per peak’, Table 1); this was, moreover, consistently the most discussed topic on both platforms in each peak. Indeed, as Table 1 indicates, in the twelve peaks analysed on Facebook, on average 63% of the discussions were about the election campaign, and in the fourteen peaks analysed for Instagram this percentage was 54%. While the two social media platforms are alike with regard to discussions of the election campaign, the same is not true with regard to the other identified topics. On Facebook, there was considerable discussion of candidacies (present in 5 peaks), government crises (present in 3 peaks) and alliances/coalitions (present in 4 peaks), as per the examples that follow. On average, these topics reached about 20% of the discussions each. In the upcoming general elections, you will not find among the candidates of the M5s any who have already served two terms. Therefore, there has been no change to the rule that the Movement adopted for itself from the start, one that acts as a form of guarantee that its elected representatives 6 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChuyKexqKtm/.

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Table 1 period

Top ten relevant topics on Facebook and Instagram in the analysed

Facebook

Instagram

Topics

N Prevalence Rank Topics topics average average per peak

Election campaign Candidacies

12

62.88

1.00

5

17.94

3.00

Government crisis Alliances/ coalitions

3

17.76

2.67

4

16.68

2.50

Rape video— Giorgia Meloni War/ Expensive bill Election programmes Immigration/ security Berlusconi on TikTok Welfare

1

7.92

3.00

5

7.43

2.80

2

6.31

3.50

2

6.05

1 1

Election campaign Government crisis Alliances/ coalitions Rape video —Giorgia Meloni Candidacies

N Prevalence Rank topics average average per peak 14

54.06

1.07

1

41.55

1.00

2

22.14

2.00

1

15.05

2.00

4

10.69

3.25

4

7.24

2.50

2

7.17

3.50

3.50

War/Expensive bill Immigration/ security Satire/memes

7

6.82

3.57

5.27

3.00

Fascism

2

5.59

3.50

5.13

2.00

Foreign affairs

8

5.56

3.13

will not be prevented by their personal ambitions from devoting themselves to the good of the country. [...].7 They say: they’re all the same. Oh no! We wanted and supported Mario Draghi. Conte, Salvini, and Berlusconi, on the other hand, got rid of him. This is anything but being the same: let’s remember that at the polls, thanks.8

7 https://www.facebook.com/100043835694050/posts/614524576685393. 8 https://www.facebook.com/100044405650360/posts/593806858776164.

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More than an alliance, Calenda and Letta’s is an electoral cartel. It seems unlikely that this agreement will give rise to a shared political platform. Gelmini, Carfagna, Calenda and Speranza disagree on all issues from the wealth tax to the ecological transition. From this point of view, I consider myself more fortunate.9

In the case of Instagram, however, the government crisis was present in only one of the fourteen analysed peaks, though it ultimately covered more than 40% of the discussions. There is a similar trend around the topic of alliances/coalitions, which is present in half of the peaks (compared to just two peaks on Facebook, yet this covers, on average, 22% of user discussions). One topic that often recurs on Instagram (in 8 of the 14 peaks analysed), covering on average about 5% of the discussions, is that of foreign affairs. As mentioned, this involved discussions relating to the death of Queen Elizabeth II but also protests concerning civil liberties and legislation introduced by foreign governments: Drink more, lads and lasses! This unorthodox exhortation comes from the Japanese government, in its attempts to deal with an unusual problem: young people no longer like to get drunk. [...].10 In Spain, sex without explicit consent will be considered rape. With 205 votes in favour, 141 against and 3 abstentions, on Thursday the Spanish Chamber gave its final approval to a bill that provides that any sexual act in which one of the people involved has not given their explicit consent will be considered rape. [...].11

Another specificity of Instagram is the presence of satire/memes, a topic that recurs in half of the analysed peaks and that was discussed by users on average in 7% of the political posts. Two other topics that are common to both social media are the questions of the war in Ukraine and its costs, which were the subjects of about 7% of user discussions, and Giorgia Meloni’s decision to share the video of a rape, in order to denounce it. This episode, although present in only one of the analysed

9 https://www.facebook.com/100044597942082/posts/594744088688851. 10 https://www.instagram.com/p/Chc0rnFtyW7/. 11 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChuB9uZM-XF/.

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peaks, involved 15% of the discussions on Instagram and about 8% on Facebook. If we look at the topics discussed on Facebook and Instagram as a whole, a clear picture emerges of a discussion that is weighed down by chatter about the election campaign, with few references to concrete issues. To establish whether they appeared and were discussed by the users during the election campaign, we subsequently analysed, for the two social media platforms, the topics in each peak individually.

5

The Main Topics and Issues on Facebook, Per Peak

As we have noted, the election campaign remains the main topic of users’ discussions in each of the 12 peaks analysed on Facebook. Analysis of the individual topics that make up each peak, on the other hand, reveals a variety of topics and issues, albeit with a lesser prevalence in user discussions. Figure 3 illustrates the main topics that emerged from the content analysis of the political posts published on Facebook. In the first peak (21–23 July), for example, the discussion is triggered by the crisis that led to the unexpected fall of the Draghi government and, consequently, the beginning of the election campaign. In the second peak

Fig. 3 Main topics and issues on Facebook in the 12 analysed peaks

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(25–26 July), however, we begin to get to the heart of the campaign, with the discussion of the election manifestos: While everyone else is talking about alliances, names, symbols, agendas and so forth, Pierluigi Bersani yesterday on “In onda” did something straightforward and rare nowadays: he spoke about real programmes and issues. He listed, one after the other, all the non-negotiable points of an authentically progressive platform: [...].12

The same period also saw an episode of incivility surrounding Renato Brunetta13 —an episode that involved just over 3% of the discussions in this peak: “Renato Brunetta is right” is something I never thought I would ever say – and yet here I am saying it. Marta Fascina – Silvio Berlusconi’s partner – insulted Renato Brunetta by referring to his height and calling him a “dwarf”, and he has said how much it hurt him. What is surprising is that despite being on the receiving end of an insult, he doesn’t realise how often he has insulted others. But this doesn’t change things. Two wrongs don’t make a right. [...] If you don’t like Renato Brunetta then stop calling him a “dwarf”.14

Between 28 and 29 July (peak 3), users on Facebook discussed employment, among other things, and more specifically the minimum wage: an issue that is particularly important to the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) and to the left-wing parties: It’s ABSURD! These people don’t care about the welfare of ordinary Italians: “Our priorities are for a minimum wage for those earning 2 or 3 euros an hour; cutting taxes on employment as a means of raising wages; help for families and businesses with their bills. The priorities of the centreright, on the other hand, are the division among themselves of electoral districts and positions of power.”15

12 https://www.facebook.com/100044563983825/posts/610563267105801. 13 A right-wing politician. 14 https://www.facebook.com/169992733022409/posts/8108367859184817. 15 https://www.facebook.com/356217484478598/posts/4835239286576373.

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In this peak, however, discussion was also triggered by a micro-event, an online exchange, on Instagram, between Giorgia Meloni and Giorgia, a famous Italian singer. The singer, playing on the fact of having the same name as the leader of Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), insulted her in a post and Giorgia Meloni, in turn, responded by saying that she, unlike the singer, refrained from insulting others: A heated exchange takes place on Instagram between the singer Giorgia and the leader of Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni. “I am also called Giorgia, but unlike her, I don’t break anyone’s balls,” said the singer. In short order, also via Instagram, comes Giorgia Meloni’s response: a screenshot of Giorgia’s post with the pointed remark,. [...] “Even if I didn’t like her music, I wouldn’t feel the need to insult her”.16

Giorgia Meloni was at the centre of another event, also initiated on social media that generated a heated debate by users. As mentioned above, on 23 August (peak 6) the news broke that Meloni had shared on her Twitter account the video of a man, with his face obscured, an asylum seeker from Guinea, who had raped a woman on a street in Piacenza. This quickly became the centre of discussions on Facebook: This is what happens when irresponsible politicians exploit news stories, without regard for the consequences or the media impact, and without respect for the suffering of someone who has been the victim of an abominable attack. [...].17 “I have nothing to apologize for, if only because mine was a gesture of solidarity” says the leader of Fratelli d’Italia, Giorgia Meloni, regarding the video she posted about the rape in Piacenza: “It was a video that had already been published by a newspaper.”18

Another event that began on social media and triggered discussion on Facebook was Silvio Berlusconi’s debut on TikTok. This event, mentioned in a little more than 5% of the discussions, characterized peak 8 (2

16 https://www.facebook.com/158259371219/posts/10158941528621220. 17 https://www.facebook.com/100043835694050/posts/631904341614083. 18 https://www.facebook.com/100064585423841/posts/436651401831037.

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September), with several posts—some kinder than others—on the 86year-old leader of Forza Italia’s performance on a social media platform that is used predominantly by young people: Look closely at that buffoonery of Berlusconi on TikTok. That obscene and ridiculous pantomime captures all the degradation and squalor that have marked these years of shit. And we too are implicated in this shameful episode.19 To liven up a farcical campaign whose outcome is already a foregone conclusion, here comes a ninety-year-old Berlusconi on TikTok who prattles on aimlessly. Then we have Salvini going on about Jerusalem and about how much he loves Israel. On the other side there’s Letta with those obscene billboards that are defacing our towns and cities. [...].20

In addition to the minimum wage, another issue that proved central to the Five-star Movement’s election campaign—which characterizes two peaks, as reported in Fig. 3, but which we find to a lesser extent in half of the peaks analysed on Facebook—was the citizenship income. This was a flagship policy of the M5s—a policy that secured its passage during the first Conte government without the full support of the centre right, which, in turn, repeatedly threatened to modify or abolish it: In 3 years, the MoVimento 5 Stelle has done things I’d been waiting for, for 30 years and had never seen anyone else do. [...]It introduced the Citizenship Income, and the ‘Dignity Decree’ designed to combat employment insecurity. They introduced left-wing measures that the left itself had failed to introduce because in the meantime it had become right-wing” [...].21 As Antonio Tajani has said, “the citizenship income will be reviewed like all welfare policies. A twenty-year-old cannot be allowed take the benefit and should be made to go to work. The citizenship income should go to those in genuine need, that is to those who are unable to work.” [...].22

19 https://www.facebook.com/100044463458263/posts/614082386750538. 20 https://www.facebook.com/253824014641154/posts/5480948111928692. 21 https://www.facebook.com/688686087913045/posts/5323038464477761. 22 https://www.facebook.com/100044498376758/posts/597084628451478.

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One of the issues that characterized the previous election campaign was immigration/security; this time, however, at least on Facebook, the issue emerged in only two of the peaks. In the first case (peak 4, 2–4 August), the discussion of this issue was triggered by the arrival of groups of migrants on the Italian coast. In the second case (peak 7, 31 August), however, the discussion was stimulated by the surprise visit of Matteo Salvini to the hotspot located on the island of Lampedusa: Yesterday 75 Algerians landed in Sardinia, today 88 in Roccella Ionica, and Taranto has been designated as a safe port for the 659 immigrants on board the Geo Barents. […].23 Blitz at the Lampedusa hotspot, look at the conditions in the centre: SHAMEFUL. This time we did not warn anyone about our visit, so you can see the true reality. From September 25th, the League will return to defend our borders, we have done it before and we will do it again! [...].24

The centre right, and the party of Giorgia Meloni more specifically, were at the centre of two other major issues that characterized this election campaign. The first is the civil liberties issue, which featured in two of the twelve peaks analysed on Facebook. Within the macro-issue of civil liberties, we find several events that triggered user discussions, including the moment that several right-wing politicians demanded that the Italian public service broadcaster, Rai, censor an episode of the famous children’s cartoon ‘Peppa Pig’. The episode, which had been aired in the UK, depicted a homosexual couple for the first-time in the cartoon: Beware! There is a new enemy in Italy! It is Peppa Pig. Fratelli d’Italia is demanding that Rai refuse to broadcast the episode in which Penny Polar Bear presents Peppa to her two mothers. I’ve got news for them: whether they like it or not, rainbow families exist and no child has ever been traumatized by the discovery of their existence. [...] We will not allow it. On the contrary, we will fight even harder for the recognition of equal rights for the children of rainbow families. It’s what living in a civilised society is all about... [...].25

23 https://www.facebook.com/100044618880800/posts/607574707406487. 24 https://www.facebook.com/100050527747831/posts/611422570551996. 25 https://www.facebook.com/100044270147547/posts/652292759589723.

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The party led by Giorgia Meloni is attacking the famous British cartoon for children: “It is unacceptable for the makers of Peppa Pig to include a character with two mothers,” says Mollicone, the Fratelli d’Italia spokesperson for culture and the arts, “we ask Rai not to broadcast the episode.” [...].26

A second theme involving Meloni’s party that took centre stage during the campaign was the issue of fascism. One of the episodes that triggered discussion around this issue occurred close to polling day (peak 12) and involved a video, posted online, of the funeral of a right-wing activist attended by a member of FdI, shown giving a fascist salute in honour of the deceased: Romano LaRussa from Fratelli d’Italia, brother of Ignazio and member, along with Fontana, of the Lombard regional council with responsibility for public security, gave a fascist salute at the funeral of a prominent member of the far-right in Milan. When you go to vote on Sunday, remember this: Meloni’s party is not fascist, but the fascists are practically all in her party. And what is the difference?27 Meanwhile, controversy rages over the video of Romano La Russa giving the fascist salute at the funeral. Fratelli d’Italia’s version: “He was inviting others to lower their outstretched arms”.28

An issue that involved more leftist politicians and parties was that of the environment. This was discussed on social media on several occasions (peaks 4 and 5), following the publication of election manifestos or appeals for support: We welcome and fully support the appeal [...] publicly endorsed by Professor Giorgio Parisi, Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 2021. As the only political force with a Green agenda competing in the elections of 25 September, we cannot but take seriously the responsibility to place the fight against the climate crisis at the top of he political agenda. Our election manifesto, which is still being drafted, will be entirely focused on climate justice and the social justice closely connected to it [...].29 26 https://www.facebook.com/169992733022409/posts/8263553956999539. 27 https://www.facebook.com/100044411170492/posts/639454987544868. 28 https://www.facebook.com/100064360644296/posts/465070568981627. 29 https://www.facebook.com/100044568273703/posts/592063248955946.

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Roberto Gualtieri launches the PD’s campaign with the phrase: “a vote for climate justice”. With an incinerator to be built in Rome on his insistence, the only thing he can launch is hypocrisy.30

6

The Main Topics and Issues on Instagram

In the election campaign period, we identified 14 peaks on Instagram, two more than on Facebook. In many cases, the issues and events that triggered discussions among users overlapped with those just illustrated for Facebook (as was the case with the rape video shared by Giorgia Meloni, immigration/security, employment and fascism). Nevertheless, even in the presence of the same issues, often the micro-events around them or the number of discussions were very different. The most obvious case in this regard is the issue of civil liberties, which appears on Instagram in half of the analysed peaks and not only in the final weeks of the campaign. Here, we find the same events that triggered debates on Facebook, but we also find others. For example, in peak 4 (14–16 August) the discussion was inspired by the election manifestoes of some of the centre-left parties: Rights are a major political issue, in countries ranging from the United States to those of Europe. [...] For a liberal radical like me, the defence of an open society is a priority, on economic issues as well as on civil liberties. The choice is clear: our side stands for civil liberties and progress; the other side looks to Orban and sympathises with Putin.31

In peak 8 (September 5), however, what triggered the discussion was a series of statements by members of Forza Italia on women’s rights. Related conversations, albeit specifically concerning the right to abortion, ignited debate in the following weeks, too, culminating in an exhortation to vote by a well-known designer from the famous fashion brand, Valentino: As in the best TV commercials on Berlusconi’s networks, women are being used in the election campaign like sets of saucepans. [...] However, we

30 https://www.facebook.com/82447712767/posts/10159955094412768. 31 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChRxsWsKSlO/.

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cannot deny that on gender equality, the centre right’s programme remains consistent: as far as it is concerned, women should stay at home.32 [...] If, as Pillon himself has said, life begins at the moment of conception (and must therefore be protected at all costs), then it is easy to see how this leads to banning abortion without exceptions (a position he has hinted at several times)..It’s really striking the way in which Simone Pillon becomes a lover of life when it comes to controlling women’s bodies, claiming to be a defender of the living, but fails to do so when he unhesitatingly finds himself in a party that would leave human beings (and I emphasize human beings, not foetuses) to die in the sea or in the Libyan concentration camps. [...].33 @pppiccioli, the creative director of Maison Valentino, has used his Instagram account to send a strong and clear message on the eve of the new elections: [...] Piccioli, who in the post defines himself as “A man of the left”, talks about his children having been raised free of prejudices and taught to defend freedom of expression as well as tolerance for all forms of diversity: [...] “Go and vote: these elections are extremely important for our country! On 25 September vote to protect our hard-won rights, thinking about progress and with an eye to the future. Never look to the past. Vote!”.34

Discussions about civil liberties on Instagram carried on up to and including the day of the vote itself (Fig. 4). Indeed, during the last peak, users talked about LGBTQI+ rights with reference to the fact that the electoral registers included separate lists for men and women: The issue of dividing electoral registers by gender has emerged on election day. [...] “People are being forced to come out”. “Instead, voters could be listed alphabetically by surname as is the case elsewhere. No one should ever feel discriminated against. Especially when exercising a fundamental right like voting. You too could list voters alphabetically , if you wanted to.”. [...].35

32 https://www.instagram.com/p/CiIVs2QtwRd/. 33 https://www.instagram.com/p/CipOTy8Dpa6/. 34 https://www.instagram.com/p/CixcglNqi_c/. 35 https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci8QWbzMEhU/.

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Fig. 4 Main topics and issues on Instagram in the 14 analysed peaks

One issue that appears only on Instagram, unlike those on which we have focused until now, is that of presidentialism. This topic enters the debate in mid-August (peak 4), when the centre-right coalition adopted it as a flagship policy and proposed a modification of the Italian Constitution: They’ve spent years and years in government without winning an election: that’s why those on the left are so afraid of presidentialism. We, on the other hand, are not afraid of the voters’ verdicts and we want to give back strength to the popular will.36 Fine. And then if you misbehave we’ll have absolute monarchy! Not even a child at nursery school would buy this nonsense! Why don’t you stop this drivel about Presidentialism, which, between childish accusations and false alarms about democracy under threat, has absolutely no substance to it? And then people wonder why we would want Draghi to remain in office. [...].37

Another feature that distinguishes Instagram is the massive presence of satire/memes, which appear in half of the analysed peaks. The presence 36 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChPX4KXNFwt/. 37 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChUktpNNmKx/.

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of this feature only on this social media platform and not on Facebook is probably due predominantly to the affordances of the platform, but also to the presence on Instagram of accounts devoted solely to this purpose. The issues and events that trigger the satire and sharing of memes are varied and cover the entire campaign period. This begins with the crisis that led to the end of the Draghi government and ends with the journey of President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, to Palermo to vote: an event that became a symbol of the requirement upon so many to have to return to their registered home-towns in order to vote. In the case of the government crisis (peak 1), a scene from the latest film by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino was used, as well as the title of the film: “It was the hand of God” became “It was the crisis of God”.38 Satirical posts also concerned the relationship between Italy and Europe: «BREAKING NEWS: THE EUROPEAN COURT SANCTIONS ITALY: “SARDINIA IS DOUBLE PARKED” ».39 In some cases, even the parties’ electoral slogans were used as a basis for the creation of memes. This was the case of the League’s slogan (I believe!), which led to the posting of pictures of Salvini from a few years previously with ironic captions added: «“Excuse me, do you #believe?” “The usual Jehovah’s Witnesses…” », or «“I believe in illegality and put it in the programme! That’s my word!” ».40

7

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have illustrated the results of a peak analysis of the trends of daily, total interactions related to posts about politics on Facebook and Instagram during the campaign for the general election in Italy in 2022. This produced an overview of the degree of online engagement by Italians with the election campaign, to some extent measuring their level of ‘enthusiasm’, and identifying the topics and themes that were most discussed, and therefore, of greatest interest to the electorate. Our analysis of online posts shows, first and foremost, a general context characterized by chatter about the election campaign, with few references to specific issues. The election campaign itself, as the topic analysis shows, is the main issue discussed in most of the conversational peaks. On the

38 https://www.instagram.com/p/CgRujM5sOZt/. 39 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChAnNIGLocX/. 40 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChUuvsZNTvr/.

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other hand, this was an anomalous election campaign, one that took place at an unusual time of year. Indeed, it is the first-time that a general election has taken place in the autumn: the crisis of the Draghi government and the President’s early dissolution of Parliament on 21 July resulted in the election being held on 25 September. These circumstances meant that the campaign took place during the summer when citizens’ exposure to television broadcasting is at a minimum and when political talk shows—genres that usually represent a communicative context capable of fuelling online political conversations (Giglietto et al., 2016)—have a marginal place in TV schedules. The lack of attention to election issues on both social media platforms at weekends and during the summer vacation—exemplified by the fact that the least number of posts was recorded on 15 August, a public holiday in Italy— shows that the campaign was a lacklustre affair with most engagement taking place at the start (inspiring comments on the fall of the Draghi government, particularly on Facebook, as shown by the first peak, 21–23 July) and in the final moment (i.e. on election day, particularly on Instagram). Although the trend of peak engagement is the same on Facebook and Instagram, the number of posts about politics found on Facebook is significantly more prominent, highlighting that Facebook is Italians’ preferred online platform for political discussion. Although the continuous flow of chatter on Facebook and Instagram is characterized by the main topic—the ‘election campaign’—the analysis of individual peaks for both social media allowed us to identify those topics which, although not particularly prevalent, nevertheless had a place on the electoral agendas of Italian citizens. Issues such as government programmes, employment, immigration and security, welfare, civil liberties or fascism fuelled, from week to week, the general conversations around the election campaign on Facebook, more as contingent conversational ‘pretexts’ than as central topics of the election debate. Among the issues that contributed to the development of engagement peaks, we also find three events that were generated directly on social media: the discussion between Giorgia Meloni and the singer Giorgia; Meloni’s tweet with the video of a man from Guinea accused of having raped a woman, and Silvio Berlusconi’s debut on TikTok. These represent typical internal dynamics of social media that are capable of generating emotional engagement, in a tension between approval and disapproval

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that is typical of the polarization that these social environments can exacerbate. However, other issues (and subsequent conversations), such as civil liberties and fascism, were also generated around media content, such as the centre-right’s objection to the episode of Peppa Pig featuring a homosexual couple, or the online dissemination of a video in which a member of FdI gives a fascist salute at the funeral of a right-wing activist. On Instagram, the issues that helped to generate engagement peaks often overlapped with those found on Facebook. However, the results indicated a greater, continued focus on civil liberties issues, which were present in half of the peaks analysed—such as women’s or LGBTQI+ rights, or the issue of abortion. This highlights a greater sensitivity to these issues on the platform, likely due to the presence of a younger audience that is more vocal about civil liberties. Political conversations on Instagram were also characterized by the presence of satirical memes, a genre that is particularly present on this platform, where, again, the audience is generally younger. In summary, as the research detailed here shows, the online political conversations of Italians on Facebook and Instagram—the most widely used social media among the population—during the 2022 general election campaign were characterized by a very general level of discussion, often fuelled by the polarizing dynamics that are typical of social media. These dynamics are not so much dependent on issues relating to election manifestos or on an agenda of campaign topics, but rather on a more generic sensitivity on the part of the public (for instance, the question of civil liberties on Instagram), on daily news (the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II) or on events generated on social media itself (such as the discussion between the politician Giorgia Meloni and the singer Giorgia or the debut of Berlusconi on TikTok). These are used as pretexts to stoke political discussion and keep it alive. The 2022 general election campaign was not only a ‘seaside election campaign’, but one that, on Facebook and Instagram, reveals how politicians seem not to have succeeded in setting the agenda but, rather, were forced to chase daily events, turning them into communication opportunities for their own attempts to acquire and maintain visibility. At least, until the following day.

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References AGCOM. (2022). Osservatorio sulle comunicazioni, 4/2022. https://www. agcom.it/documents/10179/28977374/Documento+generico+22-122022/32493656-a4be-4b32-9c3d-02abfb7ade5c?version=1.0 Ansolabehere, S., Iyengar, S., Simon, A., & Valentino, N. (1994). Does attack advertising demobilize the electorate? The American Political Science Review, 88(4), 829–838. https://doi.org/10.2307/2082710 Benoit, W. L. (2007). Communication in political campaigns. Peter Lang. Bentivegna, S., & Boccia Artieri, G. (Eds.). (2019). Niente di nuovo sul fronte mediale. Agenda pubblica e campagna elettorale. FrancoAngeli. Bobba, G., & Roncarolo, F. (2018). The likeability of populism on social media in the 2018 Italian general election. IPSJ Journal, 13(1), 51–62. Bruns, A. (2003). Gatewatching, not gatekeeping: Collaborative online news. Media International Australia, 107 (1), 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1329878X0310700106 Cepernich, C., & Bracciale, R. (2018). Hybrid 2018 campaigning: The social media habits of Italian political leaders and parties. Italian Political Science, 13(1), 36–50. Chadwick, A. (2009). Web 2.0: New challenges for the study of e-democracy in an era of informational exuberance. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 5(1), 9–41. Denton, R. E., Jr., Trent, J. S., & Friedenberg, R. V. (2019). Political campaign communication: Principles and practices. Rowman & Littlefield. Giglietto, F., Boccia Artieri, G., Gemini, L., & Orefice, M. (2016). Understanding engagement and willingness to speak up in social-television: A full-season, cross-genre analysis of TV audience participation on twitter. International Journal of Communication Systems, 10(2016), 2460–2480. https:// doi.org/1932-8036/20160005 Giglietto, F., & Lee, Y. (2017). A hashtag worth a thousand words: Discursive strategies around #JeNeSuisPasCharlie after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting. Social Media + Society, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/205630511 6686992 Giglietto, F., Valeriani, A., Righetti, N., & Marino, G. (2019). Diverging patterns of interaction around news on social media: Insularity and partisanship during the 2018 Italian election campaign. Information, Communication and Society, 22(11), 1610–1629. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1629692 McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. Panarari, M. (2022). A Voce Alta. Sguardi sulla campagna. Campaigning, marketing e framing delle elezioni politiche del 25 settembre 2022. Comunicazione Politica, 23(3) 441–448. https://doi.org/10.3270/105433

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Radicioni, T., Saracco, F., Pavan, E., & Squartini, T. (2021). Analysing Twitter semantic networks: The case of 2018 Italian elections. Scientific Reports, 11, 13207. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92337-2 Roberts, M., & McCombs, M. (1994). Agenda setting and political advertising: Origins of the news agenda. Political Communication, 11(3), 249–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.1994.9963030 Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2012). Social media and political communication: A social media analytics framework. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3, 1277–1291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-012-0079-3 Tucker, J. A., Guess, A., Barbera, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D., & Nyhan, B. (2018). Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. https://doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3144139 Voltmer, K. (Ed.). (2004). Mass media and political communication in new democracies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203328668 Wattal, S., Schuff, D., Mandviwalla, M., & Williams, C. B. (2010). Web 2.0 and politics: The 2008 U.S. presidential election and an E-politics research agenda. The Mississippi Quarterly, 34(4), 669. https://doi.org/10.2307/25750700

CHAPTER 5

New and Old (Global) Cleavages, Crises and Wars Fabio Bordignon

and Luigi Ceccarini

Abstract The effects of global crises on the electoral behaviour of Italian voters in 2022 are the topic addressed in this chapter. In a completely changed political context compared to the general election of 2018, the widespread economic, cultural and political malaise deriving from global dynamics still influenced people’s choices and shaped political competition. Feelings of anxiety and concern strongly affected an undecided and bewildered electorate in the run-up to the election—an election that rewarded the only opposition party to the incumbent government led

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_5. F. Bordignon · L. Ceccarini (B) Department of Economics Society Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino PU, Italy e-mail: [email protected] F. Bordignon e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_5

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by Mario Draghi. Insecurity arising from the cultural face of globalisation was once again a crucial driver of support for the right-wing parties. Supporters of Meloni’s FdI and its allies shared a rejection of immigration and broad support for closed-borders policies. Among their opponents, the M5s was once again a catalyst for expressions of economic and democratic malaise. In contrast, the PD and Az-IV became the ‘ideal’ political outlets for the winners of globalisation. In 2022, Italians were further divided over the controversial decisions arising from the war against the pandemic and the war on the Eastern borders of Europe. Their effects, however, seem to have partly aligned with pre-existing divisions. Keywords Cleavages · Losers of globalisation · Populist zeitgeist · Immigration · COVID-19 · Ukraine

1

Introduction

In order to understand the choices made by Italian voters in 2022, the wider context in which the general election took place must be considered. If the success of the two populist parties, the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) and the Lega (League), in 2018, was interpreted in the light of global dynamics and their economic and cultural consequences, the troubled eighteenth legislature was plagued by dramatic new planetary crises: crises with the potential to become major political cleavages. This chapter aims to illustrate the impact of these events on Italian politics. The electoral behaviour of Italian citizens has changed profoundly with the passage of time, especially since the end of the first, long Republican ‘era’. The so-called First Republic was characterised by political stasis, this thanks to the freezing of traditional social and political cleavages. However, the reverse process of de-freezing, and the advent, subsequently, of the Second Republic, inaugurated a new, extremely ‘effervescent’ period in the history of Italian politics. The country became a significant political laboratory, in which citizens, parties and electoral behaviour all underwent profound changes. The Italian transition of the early 1990s reflected long-term social and political changes, which also occurred in other Western democracies, in some cases even earlier. Italy, however, stood out for the intensity

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and speed with which the changes took place. The crisis of traditional cleavages nurtured the advance of the personalisation and presidentialisation of politics (see Foreword and Chapter 1). The emergence of new (major, minor, micro and often ‘pop-up’) parties, personal parties and anti-party parties combined with the spread among voters of anti-political sentiments and resentments, marked the uneasy, and unfinished, transition towards the Second Republic. Such developments also redefined the nature of political competition and the institutional framework of the national political system. Thus, electoral behaviour can be seen as a fruitful perspective from which to consider the long-term evolution of the interplay between politics and society in Italy. Populism has been a defining feature of the transformation of politics in Italy since the early 1990s. Since the advent of Silvio Berlusconi and his coalition of the centre-right, Italy has become an extraordinary laboratory for the study of populism. The end of the Berlusconi era in 2011 (Ceccarini et al., 2012) and the start of a new political transition have paved the way for the advent of new populist actors, who have had a profound impact on the Italian party system and its bipolar dynamics. In this process, a central role has been played by one political actor in particular: the M5s. With its post-ideological (or multi-ideological) approach, the movement party founded by the former comedian, Beppe Grillo, was able to redefine the old centre-right vs centre-left duopoly. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Grillo’s political creature concerns its ability to combine a wide array of different populist messages, solutions and host ideologies. Nevertheless, the most recent phase has also witnessed the emergence of populist actors with a more ideologically delimited populist profile. Matteo Salvini has been able to transform the old regionalist Lega Nord (Northern League, LN) into a radical right, nationalist and anti-immigration populist party. The M5s and Salvini’s League were the main winners of the 2018 general election. They were the main interpreters of Italy’s (new) ‘populist zeitgeist’ (Mudde, 2004), which would enable them to give birth to the self-defined ‘government of change’ (2018–2019). However, their access to government, and their participation (with different timing and roles) in the three different majorities that governed the country during the legislature, favoured the rise of the only party that permanently played the role of opposition: Giorgia Meloni’s FdI (Fratelli d’Italia—Brothers of Italy) (Baldini et al., 2023). This was a populist radical right party, one that also led the European Conservatives and Reformists Party and

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soon became the predicted winner of the 2022 election, together with its centre-right coalition partners. These parties have been able, in different phases, to tap into a widespread sense of democratic malaise, one that has been expressed by protest voting, by challenges to mainstream parties—especially the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD)—and by a ‘rewriting’ of the patterns of party competition. Their success and access to government positions have been seen both as a threat to democratic politics and as a way of channelling discontent arising from unanswered social demands into the political system. Given this context, the analyses presented in this chapter illustrate how old and new global crises have rewritten the coordinates of political competition. We ask whether economic tensions, fears around migration and the political-democratic malaise impacted the 2022 vote as much as, and in the same ways as, they did in 2018. If attitudes regarding responses to the COVID-19 virus and the war in Ukraine affected electoral behaviour, then it prompts questions about which parties benefited most in 2022, and whether these effects can be understood as the signs of new lines of division structuring the party system, or whether they align with existing cleavages that have (re)shaped Italian electoral competition in recent years. In order to answer these questions, in the following sections, with the help of the LaPolis post-election survey, we will provide a series of maps intersecting the aforementioned dimensions. Finally, logit regression models will be used to understand better the diverse party electorates’ voting choices.

2

Between Old and New (Global) Crises

Populist parties often present themselves as anti-establishment parties, channelling towards political elites protest originating from a widespread sense of social, cultural and political malaise affecting contemporary democracies (Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Morlino & Raniolo, 2017). A large strand of literature has linked their success to the effects of globalisation, particularly the economic and cultural effects (Crouch, 2020). Their constituents have been described as the ‘losers of globalisation’ (Kriesi et al., 2006) and of the recurrent crises of the globalised world: from the Great Recession of 2008, to the refugee crisis of 2016, to the most

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recent COVID-19 pandemic. To this must be added the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its wide-ranging consequences, both economic and geopolitical, for Italian, European and world citizens. Issues such as economic dissatisfaction and stagnating living standards, and fears of multi-ethnic society generated by migration flows, combined with the role of technology and social media communication in particular (Mounk, 2018), have often been identified as major factors channelling votes to challenger parties. It was in the increasing void between demos and party democracy (Mair, 2013) that these political forces became the ideal electoral outlet for disappointed, disillusioned, ‘critical’ citizens. These social categories choose them to give voice to their protest against established political actors and their ‘system’ considered excessively detached from ordinary citizens’ interests and demands. Populist actors’ attacks involve not only national institutions; they have European institutions and EU membership itself as ideal targets. In their view, the European authorities and the European bureaucracy are considered close to the great powers of the globalised world. For these reasons, the EU is blamed for the impact of globalisation on (ordinary) citizens’ living standards and its failure to tackle the issues related to it. Moreover, European institutions are often seen as fetters on national democracy, depriving citizens of rights to decide for themselves. For these reasons, populist actors often call for a restoration of national sovereignty through an exit from the EU (or from the Eurozone). The success of populist parties in the 2018 general election has been explained as the result of a social, cultural and political malaise connected to a number of different factors: the lingering effects of the economic crisis on middle- and working-class households; the fears induced by international migration and multi-ethnic society; widespread dissatisfaction regarding the functioning of state institutions and the conduct of a political class seen as elitist and self-referential (Barisione et al., 2018; Chiaramonte et al., 2018; Emanuele & Paparo, 2018). The economy was one of the main issues of the 2018 election campaign, one that was high on citizens’ lists of priorities (Valbruzzi, 2019). The success of the M5s, and the ‘southernisation’ of the geographical distribution of its support in 2018, has been linked to its ambitious plan to tackle economic conditions—and poverty in particular—through its ‘citizenship income’ project. Immigration was another theme characterising the campaign and, in particular, a central theme of the platforms

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of Salvini and Meloni. The success of the League and its expansion towards central and even southern regions has often been associated with its leader’s constant and flamboyant anti-immigration rhetoric, and then with his border closures as Interior Minister in the Conte I cabinet. The EU and the Euro were also important issues and have been continuously discussed in political and public debate in recent times (Bellucci & Conti, 2012). Over time, a relevant distinction between pro-/ anti-European parties has taken shape. The League has in the past explicitly expressed itself in favour of an Italian exit from the Eurozone. The M5s has often maintained an ambiguous position on this point, stating on several occasions that the decision should be up to citizens through a referendum. Giorgia Meloni too has indulged in pointed criticism of the EU, placing Italy ‘before’ Europe, consistently with the ‘sovereigntist’ approaches typical of right-wing populism. More recently, criticism has been directed at the Next Generation EU plan. Meanwhile, sympathy with Victor Orban and other political leaders of the Visegrad group has been repeatedly expressed in public statements and through social media posts. At the same time, FdI’s political critique involved both the Conte and Draghi governments and how they handled the pandemic emergency. Yet, concerning the Russian-Ukrainian affair, the FdI leader’s pro-EU and pro-NATO positions have been very clear as compared with the other members of the centre-right coalition, particularly Salvini’s League. In short, in the pre-election phase, diverse issues and political orientations intertwined. Old and new global crises were reflected in national and local politics, shaping the daily lives of Italian citizens. The consequences of globalisation have called forth new demands, on the part of citizens, for political representation and social protection; and, at the same time, they have altered the electoral bases of mainstream parties, particularly those of leftist and social-democratic inspiration, which have lost their traditional class gardée. New populist formations have had great success in the electoral competition and have gained strength with the passage of time so that the very logic of the functioning of the political system has altered. The global crises which have developed in recent years—such as the pandemic and later the war of aggression within Europe’s borders—have added to the old ones, fuelling additional anxiety and concerns in the run-up to the vote. That is the background against which Italian voters were called upon to make their choices in 2022.

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The Coordinates of a (Moving) Party System

As mentioned, the analyses presented in this chapter aim to establish the extent to which the political coordinates related to the current global context are useful for interpreting the outcome of the 2022 general election. This section will focus on the factors that proved relevant in explaining the 2018 result: those related to economic, cultural and democratic malaise. The next section will instead focus on the impact of the new crises that emerged during the eighteenth legislature: those related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war on the EU’s eastern borders. Each dimension will be, first, related to the traditional left–right coordinates, projecting the main parties onto two-dimensional maps. Then, it will be included in binomial logit models as a predictor of voting for the main parties and coalitions,1 in order to establish whether its effect is significant when the main socio-demographic variables and the other dimensions considered in the analysis are controlled for.2 The following sub-sections will address each dimension separately, starting from a basic projection of the parties onto the left–right dimension. 3.1

Left and Right

Figure 1 displays a two-dimensional map combining the positions of the major parties on the left–right (horizontal) axis, based on the selfplacement of their voters,3 and the percentages of their voters who reject the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ or are unable to find their place on the scale.

1 In order to focus the analysis on the distinctive features of each party, only the subsample of those who cast a valid vote in the 2022 general election was considered for this analysis. 2 The first descriptive approach will focus on parties over 5% in the 2018 and 2022 elections, tracing their ’movement’ on each map between the last two general elections. In order to have a sufficient number of cases and rely on more robust results, the second approach will instead focus on parties over 10% in the 2022 general election (FdI, the M5s and the PD) and the two centre-right and centre-left coalitions. 3 The questionnaire included a variable which, introducing the categories of left and right, asked the respondent to choose one of five possible positions: 1. left, 2. centre left, 3. centre, 4. centre right, and 5. right. The use of this question format reflected the use of a mixed mode (CATI-CAMI-CAWI) technique in the survey, including telephone interviews, which make it difficult to use the traditional 11-point scale.

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This representation in 2013 and 2018 corroborated the idea of a tripolar party system. The new protagonist, the M5s, assumed an atypical position with respect to parties belonging to the traditional left- and right-wing blocs. Consistent with the political narrative portraying it as a post-ideological (anti-)party, the M5s positioned itself at the top and centre of the map. Although, in 2018, the party then led by Luigi Di Maio leant slightly to the left, the closest party on the vertical axis was the League. It was confirmation of those ‘elective affinities’ that saw supporters of the two parties expressing mutual sympathies, which would favour their convergence in the majority that would support the yellowgreen Conte I government. After the fall of that government and the formation of the Conte II government, supported by the M5s and the PD, the party lost part of its right-wing component. Consistent with the idea of a re-bipolarisation of the system (Bordignon, 2020), the M5s actually underwent a leftward movement on the map during the legislature. However, despite the ‘progressive’ turn impressed by its new leader, former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, its voters confirmed their reluctance to embrace the categories of left and right. Meanwhile, in 2022, the left side of the political space—in which the position of the minor parties to the left of the PD is not shown on the map—saw the emergence of a new political actor with a distinct ‘centrist’ perspective: the electoral cartel Azione-Italia Viva (Az-IV), led by Carlo Calenda and Matteo Renzi. Certainly, the three major centre-right parties appeared to be closer on the map compared to the situation on the other side of the political spectrum, where the three major players in the area were unable to reach an agreement to form a coalition (see Chapter 1). 3.2

The Economic Malaise

Economic policies are certainly the field in which the M5s has most clearly exhibited its progressive spirit. In particular, during the 2018– 2022 legislature, the M5s promoted, secured approval for, and then defended against external attacks, its flagship measure: the so-called citizenship income programme (see Chapter 1). This was even presented by the leader of the M5s in 2018 as a project that would ‘abolish poverty’ in the country. This message actually enabled the M5s to attract those voters that were in greater economic distress in 2018. This pattern was confirmed in 2022 both by the geographical distribution of support for the party (presented in Chapter 2), which shows that the party was

Fig. 1 Left, Right, and Outside: the main parties in the ideological space (2018–2022).* Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

* The horizontal axis reports, for each party, its voters’ average score on a 5-point scale: 1. left, 2. centreleft, 3. centre, 4. centre-right, 5. right; the vertical axis reports the percentage of non-respondents and those who ‘don’t see [themselves] in this scheme’ (this answer was explicitly foreseen in the questionnaire).

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more successful in the southern regions than elsewhere, and by the map presented in Fig. 2a. The latter projects, on its vertical axis, the percentages of each party’s voters satisfied with their families’ economic circumstances. The M5s is firmly positioned in the lower part of the graph, underlining the low level of egotropic economic satisfaction among its voters. It is interesting to note that in 2018, the M5s shared this characteristic with the League (and with Forza Italia (FI)), confirming the ability of these parties to intercept the votes of the ‘economic losers of globalisation’ (Ceccarini, 2018). In contrast, the PD has often been criticised (especially by the M5s) for abandoning the lower classes and for becoming the political representative of the most satisfied and fulfilled segments of the electorate. These criticisms were, moreover, accompanied by the accusation of having almost always participated in the (grand) coalitions that had led the country since 2011 (despite not having won any elections). This is confirmed by the position of the largest centreleft party in the upper part of the map, even though in 2022 the PD found a new party competing for the support of this specific sector of the electorate. Az-IV, in fact, scores even higher on the vertical axis. These relationships are only partially confirmed by the multivariate models presented in the online appendix. Satisfaction with one’s household’s economic circumstances remains positively associated with voting for the PD and negatively associated with voting for the M5s when controlling for the main socio-demographic variables (Table A5.1). In both cases, however, it loses its significance when the other attitudinal variables, examined in the following sections, are controlled for. 3.3

The Cultural Malaise

The dimension on which the most significant rearrangement of the parties in the political space was observed, with respect to 2018, was the cultural one, comprising the popular reactions triggered by international migration. It was the dimension most closely linked to the vote for the centre right and its largest party in 2018. Salvini’s opposition to immigration, and his actions in this field as Interior Minister in the Conte I government (2018–2019), had shaped a large part of the League’s narrative. The map illustrated in Fig. 2b shows that the attitudes to immigration of voters for the three centre-right parties in 2022 were very similar. The vertical axis shows the percentages, among those voting for the major

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a. LEFT-RIGHT* AND STATISFACTION WITH HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCES

b. LEFT-RIGHT* AND OPINION ABOUT BORDER CONTROL

* See Figure 1

Fig. 2 Political space as defined by indicators of crisis (2018–2022). Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

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c . LEFT-RIGHT* AND STATISFACTION WITH HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS IN ITALY

d. LEFT-RIGHT* AND TRUST IN THE EU

* See Figure 1

Fig. 2 (continued)

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parties, who think that Italy’s borders should be more closely controlled.4 FI, the League and FdI are grouped in the upper right-hand part of the map, with a substantially stable position compared to four-and-a-half years earlier. It is interesting, however, to observe that in replacing the League as the largest party in the coalition, Meloni’s party also replaced it as the party with the largest proportion of supporters thinking that Italy’s borders should be more closely controlled. In contrast, the PD’s position is firmly anchored in the bottom left-hand corner of the map, confirming the open attitude the party’s leaders have repeatedly adopted over the years on the issue of welcoming migrants. The M5s, on the other hand, is the party whose position has changed most radically in terms of this policy issue. The party had always taken ambiguous positions on the issue of international migration in the past, often expressing positions not dissimilar to those of the centre-right. Moreover, the M5s-League Conte I government had shared the bordercontrol policies promoted by Salvini as Interior Minister. Interestingly, the largest part of M5s voters in 2018 embraced the idea that border protection should be reinforced. However, the breakdown of the alliance with the League and the recent evolution of the M5s—which also coincided with a significant reduction in the size of its electoral support—led it to redefine its positions on this issue. It should be noted that the M5s electorate remains largely divided on the issue. Nevertheless, it seems to have followed the general reconfiguration of Italian public opinion, which in 2022 appeared to be more welcoming towards people from other countries. Of course, it should not be overlooked that, thanks to new emergencies to be analysed later in this chapter, the issue partly lost the salience it had previously had. In particular, the welcoming of refugees from Ukraine has to a large extent redefined the orientation of Italian public opinion on this issue. However, the logit models presented in the appendix show that the issue of immigration clearly separated the centreright parties from their competitors in the 2022 general election. The significance and the expected signs of the parameters are confirmed for all parties for all levels of analysis.

4 Respondents were asked to choose between two competing statements: 1. Italy should open up more to the world; 2. Italy’s borders should be more closely controlled.

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3.4

The Democratic Malaise

The electoral earthquakes of 2013 and 2018 were not only the product of an economic and cultural malaise, linked to the effects of the global financial crisis and immigration-related fears. They were also the product of a political malaise, linked to dissatisfaction with democratic performance and resentment towards representative elites. Interestingly, in Fig. 2c, which intersects the left–right dimension with satisfaction with how democracy works in Italy, both winners of the 2018 vote, the League and the M5s, were at the bottom of the chart. Four-and-a-half years later, the M5s is still there. Of course, the graph does not take into account the party’s movements during the time period. Research has shown that, during the months of the Conte I and Conte II governments, the M5s had significantly softened some of its populist traits (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2021). The experience of the Draghi government (2021–2022) seems to have brought the electorate of Conte’s party back to its original position of political discontent. It should of course be recalled that the data used in this research were collected in the context of a postelection survey. Consequently, the political outlooks of M5s voters reflect at least in part their states of mind in the aftermath of the defeat at the 2022 general election. It should also be remembered that the 2018 postelection survey was conducted before the M5s and the League reached an agreement to form the Yellow-Green government. In contrast, in 2022 the possible outcome of the election in terms of government formation was very clear from election night (and even before). This helps explain why all centre-right parties showed significantly higher levels of satisfaction in comparison with 2018, at the time the survey was conducted. Contrary to the other main parties, contingent electoral performances do not seem to alter the attitudes of PD voters on this point. They emerge in general as the most satisfied with representative institutions, even when these award power to their fiercest opponents. The PD is thus firmly positioned at the top of the map, joined in 2022 by Az-IV. These results are also corroborated by multivariate analyses. Democratic satisfaction emerges as a robust predictor of voting for the PD and M5s. The relative parameters are significant and, respectively, positive and negative in all the models presented in Tables A5.1 and A5.2.

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Europe and Euroscepticism

The European Union is probably the institution that has attracted the most criticism from populist political actors in member states (Bellucci & Conti, 2012; Conti, 2014). European institutions and EU membership itself represent ideal populist targets. For this reason, the division between pro-European and anti-European parties provides an additional dimension on which to project the orientations of party electorates. It actually largely reflects the division between left and right, with centreright parties traditionally displaying Eurosceptical attitudes and centre-left parties at the opposite end of the spectrum. This pattern is again complicated by the presence of the M5s, which has shown ambivalent orientations towards the EU over time. The Movement’s positions have often resembled those of centre-right parties. In line with its positions in favour of direct democracy, the party founded by Beppe Grillo has at times even held out the prospect of a referendum on EU membership. However, the assumption of governmental responsibilities led the M5s to redefine its positions and take a more pro-European stance. This process culminated in the vote in favour of Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president, in 2019. Salvini, who was firmly anchored to the European opposition camp, said that the M5s was betraying national interests, paving the way for his decision to bring down the Conte I government, in the summer of the same year. The political developments that led to the Draghi government, combined with the Russian attack on Ukraine, seems to have further changed the M5s’ orientation. The attitudes of M5s voters towards the EU remained highly critical after the 2019 European elections, basically aligned with the positions of the League and FdI. These parties appear in the lower part of the map displayed in Fig. 2d, in which the vertical axis represents trust in the European Union. It is interesting to note that FI has taken on more pro-European attitudes over time. Even its leader Berlusconi, who had strong clashes with European institutions in the past, has changed his posture. Meanwhile, the current FI President (and now Deputy Prime Minister in the Meloni cabinet), Antonio Tajani, was President of the European Parliament between 2017 and 2019. In contrast, the PD has remained consistently at the top of the map, again joined by Az-IV. The new political experiment led by Calenda and Renzi took the most sympathetic positions towards the Draghi government and its Brussels-oriented policy agenda, effectively turning it into its election manifesto.

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These relationships are also confirmed by the multivariate models presented in the online appendix. Trust in European institutions remains a significant predictor of voting for the main Italian parties. The greater the respondent’s trust in the EU, the greater the probability of their voting for the PD and its centre-left allies. The lower the trust in the EU, the higher the probability of voting for the centre-right parties and the M5s. These relationships remain significant when controlling for the socio-demographic variables. In the case of the M5s, however, they cease to be so when the other attitudinal variables examined in this chapter enter the model.

4

The Impact of the ‘Two Wars’

The eighteenth Italian legislature was marked by two additional severe crises—crises that also originated from the global context. The COVID19 pandemic has even been described as a planetary war against an unprecedented and elusive enemy. The pandemic led to a widespread sense of insecurity in global society, with significant social, political and economic effects. The emergency measures taken by many national governments temporarily restricted civil liberties and severely limited economic activities. These events had contrasting effects in Italy. On the one hand, they produced a temporary ‘rally’ ‘round the flag’ effect, increasing trust in institutions and support for the government (Bordignon et al., 2020). On the other hand, they favoured the spread of science-related conspiracy theories and opposition to the restrictions imposed by governments. Just when the spread of the virus seemed to be slowing down or the consequences of the contagion seemed to be diminishing, and just when signs of recovery were beginning to be visible in Italy and the beneficial effects of the huge resources coming from the EU were expected (as part of the Next Generation EU economic recovery programme), other dramatic events shook the globe in the initial weeks of 2022. The return of war on the EU’s Eastern borders, following the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, further affected public opinion in Europe. In the aftermath of Moscow’s attack, a large proportion the Italian public was concerned about the conflict and reported

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being afraid of the consequences for Europe and the country.5 But, again, the immediate effect was to induce citizens to rally ’round the Ukrainian, European, and national flags’ (Bordignon et al., 2022). When faced with the humanitarian need to welcome the families of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the theatres of war, even attitudes to immigration changed to a certain extent. In April 2022, a large majority of Italians (70%) supported economic sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s country. In contrast, the issue of military aid to Ukraine divided the public, with 51% in favour and 46% against supplying arms to Kyiv.6 In the following months, these positions were further challenged by the consequences of the conflict for people’s lives. In particular, the impact on the cost of energy, and the growth of inflation, became increasingly visible during 2022, significantly affecting people’s living standards. The aim of the analyses presented in this section is to test the extent to which attitudes to the two crises have drawn additional lines of division between the main parties and coalitions, and the extent to which they overlap with those illustrated in the previous section or whether they further re-shaped the Italian political competition space. 4.1

The Covid-19 Restrictions

The map displayed in Fig. 3a intersects the left–right horizontal axis (already used in the previous section) with approval of the so-called Green Pass, which defines the vertical axis. The Green Pass is the Italian ‘translation’ of the ‘European COVID certificate’, a vaccine passport valid across the EU member states. This regulation was introduced by the Draghi government in 2021, as a measure to encourage vaccinations and to impose restrictions on travel and access to (indoor) public spaces, including workplaces. Although supported by the majority of Italians at the time it was introduced (by a very popular prime minister),7 the measure gave rise to protests and street demonstrations which took place 5 See for example the result of the March 2022 Political Atlas by Demos & Pi published

in la Repubblica (7 March): http://www.demos.it/a01956.php. 6 These results are taken from the April 2022 Political Atlas by Demos & Pi published in la Repubblica (14 April): http://www.demos.it/a01971.php. 7 According to the September 2021 Political Atlas by Demos & Pi published in la Repubblica (4 September), 69% of Italians expressed a positive opinion of Mario Draghi and 78% approved of the Green Pass.

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during the weekends, in a number of Italian cities, for months. The most notable were the dockers’ strike in the strategic port of Trieste and the ‘No Green Pass’ demonstrations in Rome in October 2021, during which an unauthorised march led protesters from the neo-fascist party, Forza Nuova, to storm the headquarters of the CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union confederation. Respondents were asked to express their degree of support for use of the Green Pass in the event of a new upsurge in infections in Italy. The map clearly shows that, one year later, only PD voters were clearly in favour of possible new restrictions, even in the event of a worsening health situation in the country. Again, not very distant positions were taken by those who voted for Az-IV. The centre-right parties and, in addition, the M5s, expressed much more critical views. Even parties belonging to the large majority that supported the Draghi government had from time to time been unhesitating in expressing their doubts or open criticism of these measures. Open criticism also came from Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI). It was no coincidence that, immediately after the election, the FdI health spokesperson said in an interview that FdI was ‘against this certificate’, which ‘was not a health measure, it did not start from scientific principles’.8 The relationships just described are confirmed when the sociodemographic variables are controlled for. In the models presented in Table A5.1, support for the Green Pass is significantly associated with voting for the PD and its centre-left coalition allies; while the opposite is true for the centre right and the M5s. However, in the models presented in Table A5.2, the parameter is significant only for the centre left and the PD when the other attitudinal variables are controlled for. In the case of the other parties, the effect of the attitudes on anti-COVID-19 policies seems to be ’absorbed’ by the other orientations. 4.2

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Even before the war, Italy, like other European countries, had seen the emergence of pro-Russian sympathies (Golosov, 2020; Onderco, 2019; Snegovaya, 2021). These in part reflected business interests and economic 8 See Bocci, M. (2022). ‘Marcello Gemmato, responsabile sanità FdI: “Mai più Green Pass, vaccini solo agli anziani. E l’obbligo per i medici non sarà prorogato”’, la Repubblica, 30 September.

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a. LEFT -RIGHT* AND EVALUATION OF THE COVID PASSPORT

b. LEFT-RIGHT* AND EVALUATION ABOUT MILITARY AID TO UKRAINE

* See Figure 1

Fig. 3 Political space and the special measures related to the ‘two wars’ (2022). Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases)

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relations with Eastern countries. In part, they reflected a certain ‘ideological attraction’ to countries and leaders offering ‘alternatives’ to western liberal democracy. Such orientations had been espoused especially by those parties that were distinguished by their populist and Eurosceptical narratives. Berlusconi had never hidden his personal friendship with Vladimir Putin. Salvini openly and repeatedly expressed his admiration for the Russian president, on more than one occasion wearing t-shirts bearing Putin’s portrait. Such attitudes have to some extent been shared, more recently, by the post-ideological M5s. The movement often took critical positions towards the EU and NATO, the World Bank and the IMF, reflecting its criticism of Western-style representative democracy. The search for alternative geopolitical paths often led M5s leaders to express their interest in Latin American regimes, such as those of Venezuela or Ecuador. But the M5s also developed relations with Russia, to the point that one of its representatives, Manlio Di Stefano, spoke at the congress of United Russia (Putin’s party) in 2016, denouncing American interference in Ukraine and stating that the M5s opposed international sanctions against Russia. However, the advent of the Draghi government and the Russian offensive in Ukraine seemed to shift the centre of gravity of Italian politics back towards Atlanticism and pro-European positions (Davidson & Monteleone, 2022). Meloni was particularly prompt in aligning her party with the West after Putin’s decision to start the military intervention. Salvini’s stances were more ambiguous, leading him to adopt a completely novel discourse drawing on the themes of peace and solidarity. The M5s and its leader took ambivalent and wavering positions, initially voting in favour of Italian military support for Ukraine but expressing increasing reservations, as the general election drew closer, on the issue of sending arms. This concise account highlights that party positions on the RussiaUkraine conflict are often put forward by political leaders evoking contrasting interests and values. Before the war, the economic dimension was undoubtedly central to the narrative of political actors expressing pro-Russian views, as many Italian firms have significant long-term connections with the country. The emotional wave following the Russian invasion partly obscured previous dividing lines, leading almost all political leaders to hide or revise their previous positions on Russia and Putin. However, the issue of Italian and Western interest in (even indirect) involvement in the conflict has often resurfaced in the political debate,

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often confusedly mixed with the sensitive issue of pacifism. The latter outlook is in fact deeply rooted in large sectors of the Italian public, especially among those on the left. Furthermore, some parties have undoubtedly tried to differentiate their positions over time, with the aim of exploiting the sense of insecurity fuelled by the economic and other consequences of the war. The vertical axis in Fig. 3b separates the Italian parties rather sharply according to their electorates’ support for sending military aid to Ukraine. In the upper part of the map, the PD, Az-IV and FI are associated with the most favourable positions. In the lower part, the electorates of the M5s, the League and FdI express opposite orientations. This pattern is not always consistent with the positions taken by the respective party leaderships. Despite the firm line taken by Meloni after the start of military operations, FdI voters confirmed their opposition to the policies taken by the Draghi government. In the case of FI, in contrast, its voters appear more aligned with the party’s recent official stance than with Berlusconi’s former sympathies. However, it should be emphasised that these relationships are only confirmed as significant for the M5s when the other attitudinal variables are controlled for (Table A5.2). In the case of FdI and the centre right, on the other hand, they already lose their significance when the sociodemographic variables are controlled for (Table A5.1). They thus seem to reflect established attitudes towards the globalised world, in particular cultural uncertainty, and distrust of European institutions, rather than a new dividing line brought about by the war.

5

Conclusion

The effects of global crises were still visible in the electoral behaviour of Italians in 2022. In a completely changed political context compared to the general election four-and-a-half years earlier, the widespread economic, cultural and political malaise deriving from global dynamics still influenced people’s choices and shaped political competition. However, new factors have to be considered: ones that concern the dramatic events of the years preceding the vote. Their effects, however, seem to have partly aligned with pre-existing divisions. Insecurity, arising from the cultural face of globalisation, was a defining (and unifying) feature of the centre-right parties in 2022, and even a topic exploited by their leaders. Supporters of FdI, the League and

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FI shared a rejection of immigration and broad support for closedborders policies. Opposite views prevailed among the electorates of all other parties, including the M5s. Conte’s party, although its voters had contrasting perspectives, marked the most significant shift on this dimension compared to 2018. This cultural shift of the M5s reflected the outflow of a part of its centre-right leaning electorate, as revealed by other studies (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2021). What still strongly characterised the M5s, however, was its ability to act as a catalyst for economic and democratic malaise. In particular, dissatisfaction with how democracy works in Italy, fuelling resentment towards the political elites, still permeates a large part of the M5s electorate. Despite its participation in all three of the governments of the eighteenth legislature, the re-positioning of the M5s during the campaign revived some of the populist traits that had partly faded during the years in office. In contrast, democratic and (in a less robust form) economic satisfaction characterised the vote for the PD, which confirmed its status as the ’ideal’ political outlet for the winners of globalisation in 2022. However, Letta’s party encountered competition from Az-IV for the support of this component of the electorate. The two parties also shared a Europhile perspective. Euroscepticism, in fact, is a trait that explains support for the M5s and, especially, the centre right (with the partial exception of FI). After the initial ‘rally’ ’round the flag’ effect provoked by the emergency, Italians were further divided over the controversial decisions arising from, first, the war against the virus and, subsequently, the war on the Eastern borders of Europe. On both the restrictions introduced by means of the vaccine passport, and the decision to send military aid to Kyiv, M5s and centre-right voters expressed the greatest reservations in the 2022 election. Meanwhile, the PD and Az-IV were, once again, on the opposite side. However, it was only in the case of the PD’s support for the Green pass and the M5s’s opposition to the supply of arms to Ukraine that these positions emerged as potential new divides in the 2022 vote. Otherwise, they seemed to follow pre-existing lines of division. They reflect a specific worldview: the anxieties of the local consequences of a globalised world; a sense of being ‘left behind’ in the global race; discontent with democratic systems, and the search for alternative models. In the years of the two wars, mistrust of democratic institutions and of epistemic authorities—(official) science in particular—reinforced each

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other. Sovereigntism and Euroscepticism were fuelled and redefined by the shock of Russian aggression, and by the backlash against the conflict. These dynamics seem to have partly rewritten the populist recipe, adding new ingredients, but without changing its overall flavour. The identification of the coordinates structuring the political space also makes it possible to answer the question whether there has been a return to a bipolar set-up. Although partly visible from the movements on the maps shown in this chapter, this process appeared largely incomplete in 2022. Only the centre-right parties seem to constitute a clear ’pole’ on the maps. The M5s has moved closer to the (traditional) centre left on the left–right axis while the presence of xenophobic views in its electoral base has diminished. At the same time, it continues to display some of the traits of the populist profile that brought it closer to the parties of the populist right and made it the main protagonist of the period of party-system tri-polarity (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2018: 4–8; Diamanti, 2013: XIX). At the same time, the 2022 elections saw the emergence of a new political actor, Az-IV, which having initially occupied political ground on the centre left, professed support for the Draghi government and its agenda, and sought to occupy the political centre. It is no accident that Az-IV founders, Calenda and Renzi, described it as Italy’s ‘third pole’, even though it came only fourth in terms of electoral support (as well as being ‘fourth’ in terms of the timing of its emergence). The failed convergence of the opponents of the centre-right, therefore, reflected not only ’strategic’ considerations (see Chapter 1) but also divergences brought about by global crises and wars that seem far from having been resolved. The possible emergence of a strong opposition during the new legislature and, in general, the possible bipolar reconfiguration of electoral competition will also depend on these crises and wars.

References Baldini, G., Tronconi, F., & Angelucci, D. (2023). Yet Another populist party? South European Society and Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746. 2022.2159625 Barisione, M., Bellucci, P., & Vezzoni, C. (2018). La genesi e le ragioni di un voto «ad alta voce». In Itanes (Ed.), Vox populi. Il voto ad alta voce del 2018 (pp. 7–16). Il Mulino. Bellucci, P., & Conti, N. (Eds.). (2012). Gli italiani e l’Europa. Carocci.

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Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2018). Towards the 5 star party. Contemporary Italian Politics, 10(4), 346–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2018. 1544351 Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (2021). Where has the protest gone? Populist attitudes and electoral flows in Italian political turmoil. Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale—Italian Journal of Electoral Studies, 84(2), 41–64. https:/ /doi.org/10.36253/qoe-10768 Bordignon, F., Diamanti, I., & Turato, F. (2020). Il contagio delle opinioni. Cittadini e democrazia ai tempi del Coronavirus. Comunicazione politica, 3(21), 389–418. https://doi.org/10.3270/98800 Bordignon, F., Diamanti, I., & Turato, F. (2022). Rally ’round the Ukrainian flag. The Russian attack and the (temporary?) suspension of geopolitical polarization in Italy. Contemporary Italian Politics, 14(3), 370–386. https://doi. org/10.1080/23248823.2022.2060171 Ceccarini, L. (2018). Tra (in)decisione di voto e discussione pre-elettorale. In F. Bordignon, L. Ceccarini, & I. Diamanti (Eds.), Le divergenze parallele (pp. 70–89). Editori Laterza. Ceccarini, L., Diamanti, I., & Lazar, M. (2012). The end of an era: The crumbling of the Italian party system. In A. Bosco & D. McDonnel (Eds.), Italian Politics: From Berlusconi to Monti (pp. 57–77). Berghahn Books. Chiaramonte, A., & De Sio, L. (Eds.). (2019). Il voto del cambiamento. Le elezioni politiche del 2018. Il Mulino. https://doi.org/10.978.8815/353870 Conti, N. (Ed.). (2014). Party attitudes towards the EU in the member states. Parties for Europe, parties against Europe. Routledge. Crouch, C. (2020). Combattere la postdemocrazia. Editori Laterza. Davidson, J., & Monteleone, C. (2022). The 2021 G20 and Italy: Keeping our dreams alive?. Contemporary Italian Politics, 14(2), 207–223. https://doi. org/10.1080/23248823.2022.2047255 Diamanti, I. (2013). 2013: il Paese delle minoranze in-comunicanti. In I. Diamanti, F. Bordignon, & L. Ceccarini (Eds.), Un salto nel voto. Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi, (pp. IX–XXVII). Editori Laterza. Emanuele, V., & Paparo, A. (Eds.). (2018). Gli sfidanti al governo. Disincanto, nuovi conflitti e diverse strategie dietro il voto del 4 marzo 2018, LUISS University Press. Golosov, G. V. (2020). Useful, but not necessarily idiots. Problems of PostCommunism, 67 (1), 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2018.153 0941 Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. In HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series, RWP16–026, August 2016. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space:

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Six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research, 45(6), 921–956. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2006.00644.x Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the void: The hollowing of western democracy. Verso. Morlino, L., & Raniolo, F. (2017). The impact of the economic crisis on South European democracies. Palgrave Macmillan. Mounk, Y. (2018). The people vs. democracy. Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Haward University Press. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x Onderco, M. (2019). Partisan views of Russia: Analyzing European party electoral manifestos since 1991. Contemporary Security Policy, 40(4), 526–547. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2019.1661607 Snegovaya, M. (2021). Fellow travelers or Trojan horses? Similarities across proRussian parties’ electorates in Europe. Party Politics, 28(3), 409–418. https:/ /doi.org/10.1177/1354068821995813

CHAPTER 6

Outside the Ballot Box: Who Is the Italian Abstainer? Fabio Bordignon

and Giacomo Salvarani

Abstract The abstention rate was one of the most striking results of the 2022 Italian general election, when the proportion of non-voters reached a peak (36%) in ‘first-order’ elections and underwent its largest increase. This chapter provides an initial assessment of the individuallevel motivations behind this behaviour, focusing on three possible sets of determinants: interest in politics and political information; social centrality and social insecurity; and political integration. The analyses, based on LaPolis Electoral Observatory surveys, confirm that abstention is a multifaceted phenomenon with multiple causes, ones that overlap and mutually reinforce each other. Those who did not vote because they ‘could not’ remain a substantial proportion of abstainers in 2022. However, for most

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_6. F. Bordignon (B) · G. Salvarani Department of Economics Society Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_6

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of those who did not vote, it was not a case of being prevented from doing so: abstention was an explicit choice. A deficit of representation has acquired prominence in explanations of voluntary abstentions in Italy. The findings underline the importance of examining the interplay between social malaise and overtly political malaise. Their different manifestations are traced back to the recent evolution of the national political system, the role of grand coalition governments, and the partial drying up of the populist political supply since 2018. Keywords Turnout · Abstention · Political participation · 2022 Italian General Election · Democratic malaise · Political representation

1

Introduction

The high and unprecedented rate of abstention was the result on which pundits and analysts focused most of their attention on election night. The 2022 general election recorded the largest share of non-voters in Italy’s post-war history, and the largest fall in turnout from one general election to another. While in recent years abstention has been even higher at European and regional elections, it was the first time at a ‘first order election’ (Reif & Schmitt, 1980) in Italy that it exceeded one-third of the electorate, reaching 36%. The national and international press referred to the phenomenon as the rise of the ‘party of the non-voter’ in Italy, attributing it to the problematic relationship between citizens and the political sphere in the country. This chapter provides an initial assessment of the possible reasons why a considerable portion of the Italian electorate deserted polling stations on 25 September 2022. Three potential sets of interconnected factors will be considered. Discussion of these factors draws on the literature on political and electoral participation, and on three strands of research concerning the motives for voting and non-voting. The first concerns the concept of social centrality, the availability of resources, and social insecurity. The second concerns political interest and information. The third focuses on citizens’ political integration and attitudes towards democratic representation and towards actors at the elite level. The investigation starts with an analysis of official data on turnout and its geopolitical distribution. It then focuses on individual-level data

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derived from the LaPolis Electoral Observatory surveys. Although they suffer from limitations that will be discussed, these latter allow for the construction of a socio-demographic profile of non-voters, while making it possible to investigate their self-reported motivations, and the factors behind their behaviour. The findings reveal that abstention is a multifaceted phenomenon with multiple explanations. However, among such explanations, we see how the deficit of political representation emerges as a key answer to why a growing number of citizens in Italy do not show up at the ballot box.

2

Explaining Abstention

Abstention is a phenomenon with a large number of possible explanations, raising numerous methodological problems often of a technical nature. These explanations can be examined at both the macro and micro-levels. At the former, institutional factors are particularly relevant. Voting registration procedures are among the most influential and often complicate international comparisons involving countries with different institutional arrangements. Other determinants include the features of the electoral law; the possibility of remote voting, outside the country or outside one’s own place of residence; the possibility of voting on more than one day; and the combining of elections to different public bodies on the same election day. Some of these factors may result in correlations that vanish if they are controlled for (Mannheimer & Sani, 2001). Other relevant macro-level variables may relate to the distance in time from previous elections, and the combination of time-of-the-year and the weather, as the cost of casting a ballot may increase in unfavourable meteorological conditions. Micro-level factors concern the individual-level variables that result in the absence of the citizen-voter from the polls. Absence is not necessarily a choice, as it often results from an impediment (Mannheimer & Sani, 1987). When people get older or fall ill, going to the polls may be impossible, or the cost of voting may outweigh any practical motivation or psychological reward. Choice can also be rooted in a wide variety of motivations, which the literature on turnout tries to uncover. The Civic Voluntarism Model (Brady et al., 1995; Schlozman et al., 2018) is still ‘arguably the most successful attempt to provide an integrated approach to participation and non-participation’ (Hensby, 2021: 2). This model identifies three broad answers to the question of why

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people do not participate in politics: because they do not want to; because nobody asked them to; but primarily because they cannot. Even individuals who, in principle, would like to participate, might find themselves in a situation in which they are unable to do so, due to the excessive costs of participation. For this reason, a large strand of the literature focuses on the issue of resources and socio-economic status (Barnes & Kaase, 1979; Verba et al., 1978). This approach emphasises the impact of social inequality on turnout and (in turn) the effects of participatory inequality in reproducing existing inequalities within society (Tuorto, 2022). Time, wealth, and other monetary resources raise the possibilities of access to different forms of participation. These types of variables can be objective, as in the case of income, but also subjective, as in perceptions of the personal costs of participation or in the case of people’s perceptions of the economy and their own economic circumstances (Valgardsson et al., 2022). Usually linked with lower resources, unemployment can negatively affect engagement (Rosenstone, 1982). These possible explanations have become particularly salient since 2008, especially in those countries that were most affected by the consequences of the great recession. Southern Europe and Italy surely fall into this category. In this context, those who suffered the most at the time of the economic crisis might be attracted to populist parties or might be tempted to refrain from engaging with the mechanisms of democratic representation. Several other variables that can be considered as resources have been found to affect participation, beyond economic ones. Level of education is often a proxy for an individual’s social position, but it might also raise personal skills, as well as the political awareness and ability to identify with specific issue positions. It increases those cognitive resources that can be seen as the first driver of political interest (see below). Gender is also a crucial variable. Women (as well as members of the LGBTQI+ community) often find themselves in circumstances, especially ‘institutional’ circumstances that are unconducive to political engagement. The same goes for being part of a minority ethnic group that is less politically engaged (Hensby, 2021). In line with this approach, an important strand of the literature explains participation starting from a description of society using a spatial metaphor (Milbrath, 1965). The more the individual finds herself in proximity to the ideal ‘centre’ of society, the greater will be her propensity to participate politically. The more she finds herself on the ‘periphery’

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of society, the greater will be her predisposition to abstain (from political participation in general). Centrality can be conceived, once again, in terms of (socio-economic) resources. It does not, however, derive exclusively from material and objective factors. It also has a psychological dimension: what matters is feeling close to the centre of society. Similar explanations refer to individuals’ social networks to investigate the determinants of political (dis)engagement. Sociability raises the chances of being in contact with others and receiving participation stimuli, consequently raising the likelihood of participation (the ‘exposure effect’). From this angle, the level of social integration, the density of interpersonal ties, and the availability of social capital promote those civic virtues that lead the individual to conceive of participation (and electoral participation in particular) as a duty of the ‘good citizen’. Among political attitudes, one of the main variables that have been recognised as encouraging active participation is individual political interest, which can also be considered as a form of latent participation (Ekman & Amnå, 2012). In contrast, an individual who shows apathy or indifference towards politics might be expected not to participate actively, or to abstain at election time. When a specific election is considered, an even stronger positive relationship might be expected between interest in that specific campaign and the probability of voting on election day. Pizzorno’s (1966) work has focused on the importance of social and political identities in promoting participation. He also focused on the action of political organisations. The latter play a decisive role in the mobilisation of citizens. There is also a ‘retro-active’ effect of organisation on identities. Organisations, in fact, help to build and strengthen a sense of belonging to a specific socio-cultural sphere (be it a class, a religious group or the territorial context). Being part of associative networks generates solidarity among members and reinforces their senses of sharing a common identity. At the same time, organisations can play an essential role in providing individuals with the resources they need to participate, mitigating (or eliminating) differences in status. Among the organisations that can encourage participation, a prominent role is played by political parties. Disengagement is often associated with the erosion of public support for the political system. Advanced democracies have been experiencing increasing distrust and disaffection towards their institutions and central actors for several decades. Twentieth-century ideologies have long since lost their grip on citizens; political identities have weakened, and parties

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have largely abandoned their integration functions. It is therefore particularly relevant to investigate how trust in institutions, attitudes towards democracy, and ideology influence the decision to abstain.

3

The Coordinates of Non-voting in Italy

For a long time, in Italy, electoral participation could be interpreted as an expression of faith for large sectors of the citizenry. During the period of Italian party democracy, which largely coincided with what would come to be called the ‘First Republic’ (1946–1992), voting was primarily an expression of the voter’s political identity. More than a civic duty as such, voting was experienced as a duty to a specific political (territorial) subculture. During the initial decades of the republic, Italian elections were characterised by very high turnouts. This was explained by the strength of the mass parties and the high level of ideological polarisation, which combined with other important institutional incentives: automatic registration; home delivery of electoral certification; voting over two days and the constitutional stipulation that voting was a ‘civic duty’ (Mannheimer & Sani, 1987). If high degrees of partisanship and political radicalism are expected to produce high levels of participation, it is not surprising that the decline and then fall of Italian party democracy were associated with a drop in turnout. This could be seen as a secular trend, bringing the country in line with other advanced democracies. However, the numerous political tensions that the country has experienced in recent decades (see Chapter 1) have undoubtedly exacerbated the relationship between citizens and politics, accelerating the process of detachment from the political sphere. Since the 1980s, Italy has experienced a gradual increase in abstention rates. An increase, which, since the beginning of the Second Republic, has coincided with an increase in electoral volatility. The growth in abstention has been particularly strong since the start of the second decade of the new millennium, in line with a trend that affected the European Union and Mediterranean Europe more broadly during the years of the Great Recession (Tuorto, 2022). The concomitance of economic difficulties and increased abstention reinforced explanations centred on the relationship between political participation and the economy (Dassonneville et al., 2022; Schafer et al., 2022). In the Italian case, the economic crisis has been the catalyst of renewed political malaise, translating into

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political disaffection, protest voting, and a new upsurge of populism (Itanes, 2013, 2018). During this turbulent phase, it has been hypothesised that the emergence of populist parties and of the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) in particular has prevented the number of abstentions from being even greater than they actually have been. However, the positive effect of populism on turnout has been called into question (Nemˇcok et al., 2022). The curve shown in Fig. 1 becomes particularly steep from 2008 onwards. The 2006 general election is the last one for which a decrease in the abstention rate has been recorded. However, it has been pointed out that this was the largely artificial consequence of the fact that in 2006 the size of the denominator was reduced by the more than two million voters inserted into the Register of Italians living abroad (AIRE), who were now included in the new overseas constituencies (D’Alimonte & Vassallo, 2006).

Fig. 1 Electoral abstention: the trend (%; 1948–2022) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior data)

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Before 2022, the most significant increase in the abstention rate had been observed in 2013. The 2013 general election followed the crisis of the Second Republic, after the end of the fourth Berlusconi government (2008–2011) and the arrival in office of the first of a series of grand coalitions beginning with the Monti government (2011–2013). On that occasion, the gap compared to previous elections was six points: for the first time, one Italian in four had not taken part in the most important democratic ritual. However, this record was destined to be surpassed at the most recent elections: 16.7 million Italians did not show up to the polls in September 2022. To these could be added 1.3 million who cast a blank or invalid ballot, bringing to 18 million the overall number of people who failed to cast a valid vote. During the new political transition after 2011 (see Chapter 1), grand-coalition governments likely fuelled sentiments related to a lack of political representation. On the one hand, discontented voters turned away from the ballot box. On the other hand, they rewarded the challengers of grand-coalitions. As far as the 2022 national elections specifically are concerned, it is also possible that citizens were further discouraged from going to the polls by the predictions of the electoral outcome, all of which indicated that the success of the coalition of the centre right was very likely. On top of that, the 2022 campaign took place during the Summer. A ‘seaside campaign’ (see Chapters 3 and 4) was almost unprecedented in Italian electoral history, and it might have contributed to fuelling the abstention rate. In contrast, the geography of non-voting in 2022 suggests a wellknown pattern, one characterised by a clear North-South divide. The map illustrated in Fig. 2 places each of the 107 Italian provinces into one of ten categories based on turnout. The highest participation was recorded in the central and northern regions, with turnout rates around or over 70% in four of them: Emilia-Romagna (72.0%), Veneto (70.2%), Lombardy (70.1%), and Tuscany (69.8%). The most virtuous province was Bologna with 74%. The seven regions in which turnout was lower than 60% are all located in the South, with a record low of 50.8% in Calabria. Two Calabrian provinces—Reggio Calabria and Crotone—even fell below 50%. All these regions were also characterised by a drop in turnout rates, which exceeded 10 percentage points compared to the 2018 election, with the sole exception of Sicily (−5.4). Lower turnouts have been recorded at second-order elections. At the 2019 European election in Italy, the turnout was only 56%. Meanwhile in several recent regional elections, less than half of the eligible voters

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Fig. 2 The geography of electoral abstention 2022 (% in 107 Italian Provinces; ten groups based on deciles) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior data)

have taken part. Particularly, shocking was the 2014 turnout in a region traditionally considered the most significant repository of Italian social capital, Emilia-Romagna, in which only 37.7% of voters went to the polls to choose their regional representatives. Nevertheless, the decline in turnout at general elections—the most important national competitions

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in a parliamentary democracy—has been striking in terms of its recent development and its magnitude. The decline between the general elections of 2006 and 2022 was as much as 20 percentage points. Although we know that other advanced democracies ‘coexist’ with low rates of political involvement, the speed of this process rings alarm bells for the health of Italian democracy. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the reasons behind the decline, focusing on the individual-level motivations of voters.

4

The Social Profile of the Italian Abstainer

In the remaining sections of this chapter, we use the survey data collected by the LaPolis electoral observatory before and after the 2022 general election. However, important methodological caveats are in order. As voting can be seen as a civic duty of the ‘good’ citizen, and as it was once also considered a formal obligation in Italy, interviewing is likely to underestimate the extent of non-voting. In post-election surveys, the ‘social desirability’ factor will drive people to say that they have voted even if they have not. In pre-election surveys, it will drive people to say that they intend to vote even if they do not. Moreover, political surveys tend to include those who are most interested in politics (Blais & Daoust 2020). Given that—as discussed below—degree of political involvement is one of the most relevant factors to consider when studying turnout, it is reasonable to assume that a non-negligible component of the studied behaviour will remain beneath the surface of survey data. Taken together, the problem of social desirability and the problem of self-selection result in a significant underestimation of the abstention rate as measured by surveys. This problem, largely confirmed by other studies (Marquart et al., 2020), is one that the data used in this chapter cannot elude. In the post-election survey used for the following analyses, the proportion of abstainers was around 16%, which creates limitations both in terms of statistical representativeness and in terms of the number of cases available to profile this specific group. Following Blais and Daoust (2020), turnout-weighted data are used throughout the chapter, to obtain reported turnout rates corresponding to the official 2022 turnout. To provide a robust picture of the abstention landscape, the profile proposed in this section has been generated using pooled data from three separate (pre- and post-election) surveys, bringing the overall number of cases to 3,320. Figure 3 shows an estimate of the number of abstainers in

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different social groups. Differences by gender, age, education, and occupation were taken into account. The latter two variables appear to be the most influential in determining abstention rates. The 2022 general election was the first to result in the appointment of a woman as Prime Minister. Nonetheless, gender remains an important variable to investigate in relation to political participation. The research confirms the size of the gender gap already registered by larger studies using official data: turnout in 2022 seems to have been four percentage points lower among women than among men. These studies also showed that, while young women tend to vote more than young men, the overall

Fig. 3 Non-voters by social group (%) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, estimates based on a pooled file of three surveys September–October 2022 [base: 3,320 cases])

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gap favouring men is almost entirely attributable to the older members of the population, especially those aged over 70 (Tuorto & Sartori, 2020), among whom abstention rates tend to rise. The relationship between age and turnout in the Lapolis surveys is uncertain up to the age of 75. However, it is important to note that the lowest abstention rate is registered among the under-30s (30%). On the other hand, abstention increases among older people, exceeding 40% over the age of 75. Much stronger is the relationship with education. Almost half (45%) of those with low levels of education (up to the lower secondary school qualification) did not show up to the polls. The figure drops to 26–28% among people with medium-level (upper secondary school) qualifications or higher. Differences relating to occupation also appear to be significant. The lowest levels of abstention were recorded among students (15%) and white-collar workers (office workers, technicians, and managers: 24%). Abstention increased among less qualified workers (where, among blue-collar workers, it was 40%); among homemakers (47%), and particularly among the unemployed (51%). These descriptive statistics do not take into account the possible interaction between socio-demographic attributes. Nevertheless, they seem to suggest that there is a correlation between casting a ballot on the one hand, and resource availability and a high level of social centrality on the other, both being relevant elements of traditional interpretations of political (and electoral) participation. Moreover, they highlight that specific social groups are particularly affected by economic hardship, and that this can have an impact on their political attitudes and negatively affect their propensities to engage in politics in the current electoral context. These issues will be considered in more detail in the following sections.

5

Self-Reported Reasons

Figure 4 summarises respondents’ self-reported reasons for abstaining at the 2022 general election. These results are important firstly because they help isolate the component of non-voting due to objective impediments, which appear to have affected over a third of those who did not show up at the polling stations (36%). The largest proportion (22%) cited physical, illness-related, age-related, or other reasons. An additional 14% said that they were away from their places of residence for work-related, studyrelated, or other personal reasons.

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Fig. 4 Self-reported reasons for non-voting (%, figures for 2018 in brackets) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

Even ‘involuntary abstention’ is therefore a multifaceted phenomenon involving different components of society differently. Reasons related to age or health mainly concern elderly respondents and we can assume that they have become more relevant over time due to population ageing. Analysing the 1979 general election, Mannheimer and Sani (1987) estimated the proportion of over-65s who were prevented from going to the polls at about 1.1 million: this was about half of those who abstained, leading the authors to reject the hypothesis that there was a significant rate of voluntary abstention. Since then, the component of the population of voting age that is over 65 has grown from 18% (1981) to about 28% (2022). According to the white paper of the commission of experts appointed by the Italian Ministry for Parliamentary Relations (2022), led by constitutional law professor and former minister for the public administration and regional affairs, Franco Bassanini, there are in Italy approximately 4.2 million elderly people with mobility difficulties. 2.8 million are severely disabled. In addition, there are 4.9 million voters who work or study outside the province or metropolitan city in which they reside. As compared to the former group, the latter are voters with a completely different social (and age) profile, whose electoral participation could be facilitated by forms

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of remote voting or electronic voting which are not yet envisaged in the country. The post-electoral surveys carried out by LaPolis for the previous general elections included an open question the responses to which were used to define the question wording for the 2022 questionnaire. Hence, comparison of the results makes it possible to analyse the evolution of ‘involuntary’ abstention. This does not seem to have changed significantly in the period between the last two elections: the trend shows a modest increase from 32 to 36%. In sum, even if ‘involuntary abstention’ seems to be a non-negligible phenomenon, abstention appears, on the whole, to be a choice in contemporary Italy. Behind such a choice, however, different motivations can be detected. These motivations can be divided into two broad areas. The first concerns political detachment and covers those who, for various reasons, do not care (enough) about politics. The second concerns the representation deficit, covering those who, roughly speaking, feel that politics do not care (enough) about them. Of course, the two areas partly overlap and mutually influence each other, but the second appears to have a stronger impact. A large proportion of non-voters—about one in two—does not feel represented in the current political context. They think that politics and politicians are detached from them. They do not identify with candidates, parties, or their manifestos. They think that the latter pursue interests other than those of the people who vote for them. They feel that the available political outlets are not sufficiently distinguishable in terms of their political profiles and policy platforms. They are convinced that the decisions made by political representatives in the public institutions on their behalf are beyond their control. Among these motivations related to the lack of political representation, most respondents cited, as the reason for their abstention, their conviction that parties ‘do what they want after the elections’ (25%). 7% explicitly stated that no platform, party or candidate represented them. The additional 7% were simply unable to choose whom to vote for. Behind these results, it is possible to detect the motivations that, in recent years, have fuelled the Italian populist wave. For at least some of those who did not show up to the polls in 2022, abstention represents a political ‘tool’. It is a form of negative participation used to send signals to the political elites, to express their dissatisfaction or resentment. 11% of interviewees explicitly identified ‘protest against the parties and/or politicians’ as the reason behind their choice. In brief, motivations related to

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the theme of representation account for 50% of answers, a proportion very similar to the one (53%) registered at the 2018 election. As widely expected, given the above-mentioned problems of social desirability, the proportion of abstainers who openly describe themselves as politically apathetic is much lower. Here, too, we can distinguish two different sub-components. 8% said they were not interested in politics or elections. In 4% of the cases, we can speak of ‘positive apathy’. These citizens can be described as satisfied: they think that things work well without their active participation and prefer to avoid the costs of participation. Combining these two components, we can estimate the overall proportion of ‘detached’ citizens at around 12% of those who did not participate in the 25 September election. At the 2018 election, this percentage was similar but lower, at around 9%. Self-reported motivations provide a first important picture of the reasons behind the non-vote and allow significance of the various impediments to be estimated. However, they suffer from certain limitations. Social desirability affects the individual’s propensity to disclose certain motivations. Sometimes, the factors leading to a specific political action may be hidden from the individual herself. Above all, the determinants of participation overlap and compound their effects. For these reasons, in the next section, the main theoretical approaches presented in Sect. 2 will be applied to the LaPolis post-electoral survey, to assess their weight in the explanation of abstention at the 2022 general election.

6

The Drivers of Abstention at the 2022 Election

Specific theoretical expectations can be derived from the discussion developed so far, with reference to the three domains introduced in the first section of this chapter. It is worth summarising them before introducing the analyses. (1) As regards the domain of political interest and information, abstention could be explained in terms of detachment from politics and the configuration of the individual’s ‘media diet’. (2) As regards the domain of centrality and social insecurity, people who feel they have a marginal position in society and experience conditions of economic or cultural hardship might be expected to be more prone to abstain. (3) As regards the domain of political integration, it can be expected that people who are more dissatisfied with the functioning of democratic institutions, who

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display greater dissatisfaction with political outputs, who have fewer ideological ties anchoring them to a specific political outlet might have fewer incentives to show up to the polls. For each of these three domains, potential predictors of abstention were identified and tested through a series of multivariate statistical models.1 The complete models are reported in the online appendix of this book (Table A6.1). Meanwhile, Fig. 5 reports the predicted probabilities of abstention according to the individual attributes that emerged as significant determinants through these analyses. At this stage, we introduce the specific variables that were tested, and the main insights offered by each step of these analyses. Firstly, it is important to remark that in all models there were controls for the main socio-demographic variables: gender, age, education, and occupation. It should be emphasised that these attributes can be related in different ways to the availability of resources. The baseline model (model 1) reported in Table A6.1 includes only these variables. The results confirm what has been largely anticipated by the bivariate analyses illustrated in Sect. 4 (Fig. 3). Two socio-demographic factors in particular turned out to be related to abstention. The first is a low level of education, since the probability of abstention drops significantly among people with medium and high levels of education. The second is occupation, since abstention is significantly related to unemployment or employment as a worker. In the following models, self-employed status also emerges as positively associated with abstention, while student status emerges as negatively associated. It is also worth noting that, when controls for other socio-demographic variables are introduced to the model, a specific age group appears to be associated with a reduction in abstention: this is the 65–74 age group. The first set of independent variables tested in the models concerns the domain of political interest and information (Model 2 in Table A6.1). As can be seen in Fig. 5, general interest in politics significantly reduces the probability of abstention. This latter drops from 42 to 29% when comparing people with low levels of interest (i.e. ‘little’ or ‘none at all’) in politics to people with high levels (i.e. those ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ interested in politics). This relationship is confirmed when interest specifically in the 2022 election campaign is controlled for (Model 3) and when 1 Logistic regression models were used in the analyses reported in Table A6.1 in the online appendix.

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Fig. 5 The determinants of abstention (only significant effects) (Note Predicted probabilities based on a series of logit models presented in the online Appendix [see Table A6.1]. Only significant effects are displayed, based on the following models: 2 Model 2; 3 Model 3; 4 Model 4; 5 Model 5; 6 Model 6 [levels: L = Low; H = High; N = No; Y = Yes; P = placed; NP = not placed]. Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases])

variables from other theoretical domains are introduced into the models (Model 7). Precisely because interest in the campaign was expected to be closely linked to voting, this variable was only introduced in a second step (Model 3). Indeed, the probability of abstention is reduced to 29% among people who followed the campaign, compared to 55% among those who did not. On the other hand, active involvement in political discussions with family members or friends is weakly associated with the probability

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of voting. Its effect disappears when interest in the campaign is introduced to the model. To analyse the interplay between information consumption, political information, and electoral participation, three possible predictors were considered: the information received, during the campaign, from three distinct sources, namely newspapers, television, the web, or social networks (see Chapter 3). A robust relationship with abstention was detected only in the case of newspapers: the probability of abstention is significantly lower among those who received political information through newspapers during the campaign (31%). A similar but weaker pattern emerges with regard to television. Meanwhile, no significant relationship was detected for online information. These results seem to suggest a distinct effect of legacy and new media on the propensity to abstain. While exposure to political information through ‘traditional’ channels, such as newspapers and television, is positively associated with higher turnout, this is not the case for the Internet. The effect of information through the digital media is not significant. This attests to the peculiarity of online information and the communication environment, which some readings describe as a more contentious arena with potentially ‘toxic’ effects (Marquart et al., 2020: 698). However, this divide appears to be weak at least as far as TV is concerned. Its relationship with higher turnout, in fact, disappears when other variables enter the model (starting from Model 3). It is worth recalling that the component of those who did not use TV as a source of political information during the campaign was very small (see Chapter 3). Three possible predictors were considered for the domain of social centrality and social insecurity. The first variable concerns perceptions of household economic circumstances, which is an indicator of economic insecurity (and potential economic hardship). The second variable concerns cultural insecurity, measured as the propensity to favour closing national borders to immigrants.2 The third variable was intended to register general insecurity in relation to globalisation processes. It recorded respondents’ agreement with the statement, ‘Today’s world makes me anxious’. It should be recalled that other structural variables related to the topic of centrality, such as the standard socio-demographics, 2 The question in the LaPolis Survey asked respondents to express their preferences with respect to two opposing statements: ‘Italy’s borders should be more controlled’ vs ‘Italy should open up more to the world’.

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were already in the model when these independent variables were introduced (in Model 4). Only the effect of perceptions of household economic circumstances is significant when the socio-demographic variables and the other indicators of social centrality/insecurity are controlled for. The probability of not showing up to the polls rises to 43% among people with low levels of satisfaction with their household’s economic circumstances, while it is 31% among people revealing high levels of egotropic economic satisfaction. However, it should be emphasised that this relationship disappears when all other potential predictors enter the model (in Model 7). As regards the domain of political integration, four possible predictors were considered. The first is an additive index of institutional trust, summarising trust in four national and European institutions: the Italian state, the Italian parliament, Italy’s president, and the European Union. The second is the respondent’s satisfaction with how democracy works in Italy. The third is the respondent’s assessment of the government led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi (2021–2022). The fourth variable separates those who position themselves on the left-right axis and those who refuse (or are unable) to do so. This last variable was included to test the theoretical expectation that those who do not perceive themselves in leftright terms also have a weaker anchorage to the traditional political parties of the (centre) left and the (centre) right, and thus, a lower incentive to show up to the polls. This expectation is strongly supported by the results (Model 6). The probability of abstention is nearly 50% among those who reject the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ (48%). Also, for this reason, the significance of the other dimensions of political integration was preliminarily tested in a separate model (Model 5). Among these dimensions, institutional trust was not found to be significantly associated with the probability of abstention (at least when the other attitudinal predictors in the model were controlled for). Conversely, both satisfaction with democracy and assessments of the performance of the Draghi government were inversely associated with the probability of abstention. This latter was 41% among those who said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy works in Italy and 43% among those who had a poor opinion of Draghi’s grand-coalition government. Their effect remains significant even when the variables related to the other theoretical domains enter the model (Model 7).

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7

Conclusions

The heightened abstention rate was one of the most striking results of the 2022 general election. It signalled that, a decade after the start of the new Italian transition, the political system was still marked by enduring tensions between citizens and political elites, which take on different guises from one election to another. The analyses presented in these pages offer more than one possible explanation for the magnitude and trend of non-voting in Italy. They rather confirm that abstention is a multifaceted phenomenon, with multiple causal mechanisms, ones that overlap and often mutually reinforce one another. Even so, some variables have a larger impact than others. Unlike what might have been claimed until the early 1980s, abstention is no longer exclusively or predominantly driven by objective impediments. Nevertheless, those who did not participate in the vote because they ‘could not’ remain a substantial share of abstainers in 2022. More than a third of those who did not turn up at the polling stations said that they were prevented from doing so (36%). However, behind this component, a range of motivations and profiles can be detected. For the largest proportion, these were physical problems, related to age or illness. For another component, the causes were related to work, study, or other personal issues. In the first case, therefore, it is an almost physiological dynamic, mostly rooted in the ageing of the population. In the second case, the distance from the polling booths can be bridged through facilitation mechanisms, starting with the different forms of remote voting, including (but not limited to) those offered by the digital revolution. For the remaining part of the non-voting electorate, however, the distance from politics appears more difficult to bridge. For these people, abstention is an explicit choice, although a choice again based on different motivations. Abstainers who ‘admit’ that they are politically apathetic were a small fraction of those interviewed for the LaPolis survey (12%). However, having followed the 2022 campaign and political interest in general proved to be significant predictors of turnout. They maintain their relevance even when other political attitudes are controlled for. Motivations for abstention related to an explicit choice not to vote might also have been fuelled by the predictions of the election outcome, which, during the campaign, were suggesting a decisive victory for the centreright coalition. The configuration of the media diet also appears to be influential, but especially with regard to the more traditional sources

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of political information, such as those channelled by the print media. The consumption of politics through newspapers appears significantly to reduce the probability of abstaining. The relationship with televised political information is, although present, much less robust, while it is completely absent as far as online information is concerned. Other relevant explanations emphasise the role of social centrality and the availability of resources. The less educated, those excluded from the labour market, or those with lower-skilled occupations show a lower probability of turning out to vote. Those who report situations of individual economic hardship also have a higher probability of abstaining. However, it is important to note that this relationship disappears when political integration variables enter the models. In contrast, the other indicators of social, cultural, or globalisation-related insecurity do not have a significant impact on abstention. Most of the self-reported motivations for abstention signal a visible deficit in political representation. They concern the difficulty of finding a suitable political outlet; of finding a party with which one can identify, or the explicit intention of protesting against the main political actors. The growing disconnection between parties and society and the (partial) decline of old ideological certainties encourage abstention. People who reject the left-right ideological coordinates are more loosely anchored to the political system and, therefore, more prone to abstain. It is likely that, for a share of these people, abstention does not represent a ‘final’ choice. It has become a (legitimate) political option among others. Such a choice has probably been fuelled by the experience of grand-coalition governments. This might have clouded both ideological coordinates and the capacity to vote in line with individual evaluations of the outgoing government. This propensity to abstain also seems to be fostered by deep feelings of dissatisfaction that linger in the country, thirty years after the collapse of the First Republic. Indeed, people who say they are dissatisfied with how democracy works in Italy are significantly more prone to abstain. Their feelings concern the political output—the solutions they expect from public policies—and point back to the issue of social malaise. On top of that, their feelings also regard the role of political elites in general, as they call into question democratic procedures. Especially, what seems to foster electoral abstention the most is the perception of a weak link between electoral expressions of the popular will and the political decisions that are made by representatives in the public institutions. 25% of

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abstainers say they did not show up to the polls because ‘the parties still do what they want after the election’. These results suggest that four and a half years after the populist wave of 2018, political malaise still strongly characterises Italian voters, and that populist parties have not succeeded in containing the rise in electoral abstention. The growth of the non-vote at the 2022 general election was, at least in part, a different manifestation of this political malaise, and it might have reflected the partial drying up of the populist political supply. All but one of the former populist challengers were put to the government test, and took part in a grandcoalition government, leaving the electoral landscape with only one major opposition party.

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Milbrath, L. (1965). Political participation: How and why do people involved in politics. Rand McNally & Company. Nemˇcok, M., Bosancianu, C. M., Leshchenko, O., & Kluknavská, A. (2022). Softening the corrective effect of populism: Populist parties’ impact on political interest. West European Politics, 46(4), 760–787. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01402382.2022.2089963 Pizzorno, A. (1966). Introduzione allo studio della partecipazione politica. Quaderni di Sociologia, 3–4. Now in Pizzorno, A. (1993). Le radici della politica assoluta (pp. 85–128). Il Mulino. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. (2022). Per la partecipazione dei cittadini. Come ridurre l’astensionismo e agevolare il voto. Relazione della Commissione di esperti istituita dal Ministro per i rapporti con il Parlamento, con delega alle riforme istituzionali. Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://www.riform eistituzionali.gov.it/media/1420/libro-bianco-edprovvisoria-13042022.pdf Reif, K., & Schmitt, H. (1980). Nine second-order national elections—A conceptual framework for the analysis of European Election results. European Journal of Political Research, 8(1), 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765. 1980.tb00737.x Rosenstone, S. J. (1982). Economic adversity and voter turnout. American Journal of Political Science, 26(1), 25–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/211 0837 Schafer, J., Cantoni, E., Bellettini, G., & Berti Ceroni, C. (2022). Making unequal democracy work? The effects of income on voter turnout in Northern Italy. American Journal of Political Science, 66(3), 745–761. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/ajps.12605 Schlozman, K. L., Brady, H., & Verba, S. (2018). The roots of citizen participation: The civic voluntarism model. In K. L. Schlozman, H. Brady, & S. Verba (Eds.), Unequal and unrepresented (pp. 50–80). Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.23943/9781400890361-005 Tuorto, D. (2022). Underprivileged voters and electoral exclusion in contemporary Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. Tuorto, D., & Sartori, L. (2020) Quale genere di astensionismo? La partecipazione elettorale delle donne in Italia nel periodo 1948–2018. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 11(22), 11–22. https://doi.org/10.13128/smp-12624 Valgardsson, V., Stoker, G., Devine, D., Gaskell, J., & Jennings, W. (2022). Political disengagement. In M. Giugni & M. Grasso (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political participation (pp. 744–762). Oxford University Press. Verba, S., Nie, N. H., & Kim, J. (1978). Participation and political equality: A seven-nation comparison. Cambridge University Press.

Methodological Note

The analyses presented in this book are based on the work carried out by the staff of two research centres based at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo: the electoral analyses were conducted by the Electoral Observatory of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies; the analyses of citizens’ online engagement with the election campaign were conducted by LaRiCA—the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication. The Electoral Analysis The electoral analysis of the 25 September 2022 general election was conducted by the Electoral Observatory of LaPolis (the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies, University of Urbino Carlo Bo), and was directed by Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarini and James L. Newell. Elisa Lello, Giacomo Salvarani, Alice Securo and Fabio Turato contributed to the data analysis. The research draws on two different sources. 1. For the ecological analyses, carried out on aggregate data at the provincial level, the votes won by each party (and coalition) at the 25 September 2022 general election (Chamber of Deputies), provided by the Ministry of the Interior, were used.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9

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2. The individual-level analyses are based on a post-election survey. The survey was carried out on 10–20 October 2022 by the polling institute Demetra using a mixed-mode method of interviewing: Cati— Cami—Cawi. The national sample of respondents is 1,315 and is representative in terms of socio-demographic variables (gender, age) and the territorial distribution of the Italian voting age population. The data were weighted according to educational level and by party voted for at the 2022 general election 2022. The distribution of the vote and non-vote by social group (Chapters 2 and 6) was estimated using pooled data from three separate (pre- and post-electoral) surveys, bringing the overall number of cases to 3,320. The pooled dataset was obtained by integrating data from the LaPolis post-election survey with two surveys conducted by Demos & Pi, using the same survey design: – Political Atlas, Demos & Pi—pre-electoral (5–7 September 2022; number of cases: 1,001). – Political Atlas, Demos & Pi—post-electoral (4–6 October 2022; number of cases: 1,004). The past post-election surveys used for diachronic analyses were carried out by LaPolis and Demos & Pi, using the same survey design. The Analysis of Citizens’ Online Engagement with the Election Campaign The LaRiCA research team, consisting of Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Fabio Giglietto and Anna Stanziano, designed and developed the social media research project on Facebook and Instagram. A dataset consisting of political posts published on these social media platforms between 21 July (the day the election was called) and 25 September (the day of the election) was constructed. Posts were identified as political when they mentioned at least one of a set of political keywords.1 CrowdTangle APIs was used

1 “Fratelli d’Italia”, “FdI”, “Meloni”, “Partito Democratico”, “PD”, “Letta”, “Lega”, “Salvini”, “Movimento 5 Stelle”, “M5S”, “Conte”, “Forza Italia”, “FI”, “Berlusconi”, “Tajani”, “Azione”, “+Europa”, “Calenda”, “Italia Viva”, “Renzi”, “Italexit”,

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to search for political posts published across all the accounts tracked by Facebook and Instagram. CrowdTangle only tracks public accounts. This means that the posts included were published on Facebook pages, on the public pages of Facebook groups and on public Instagram accounts. Additionally, CrowdTangle only tracks influential accounts. While the extent of its coverage is not precisely documented, figures reported on the CrowdTangle website indicate a coverage of 99.64%. This includes Facebook pages with more than 25K Page Likes or Followers; all public Facebook groups with 95K+ members; all public Instagram accounts with more than 50K followers; and all verified profiles/accounts on both platforms. The dataset consists of 573,786 Facebook posts and 28,900 Instagram posts. The datasets have been cleaned by removing lowercase mentions of certain politicians having surnames that are also common Italian words (e.g. Meloni which also means ‘melons’) and posts mentioning football and basketball teams, while not dealing with politics (‘Lega’ is both the name of a political party and the Italian for ‘league’ so that it can appear in reference to—for example—football/basketball leagues). After this cleanup, the two datasets respectively included 571,901 (109,657,040 total interactions) and 28,753 (33,807,978) posts. Following a procedure commonly used when analysing posts’ timelines (Giglietto & Lee, 2017), a breakout detection algorithm was used in order to identify peaks in the daily total interaction trends. The algorithm identified peaks by grouping adjacent days where the total daily interaction exceeded the average of daily total interactions (respectively 1,636,672.24 for Facebook and 504,596.69 on Instagram). This process detected 12 peaks for Facebook2 and 14 peaks for Instagram.3 For each set of posts in a peak, the main topics were identified. Initially, all the textual fields provided by CrowdTangle for each post (title, description, message and image_text—that is, any text used by an image post) were combined. The resulting string variables—created by lowercasing all terms, and by removing numbers, punctuation, common Italian and

“Paragone”, “Alleanza Verdi Sinistra”, “Europa Verde”, “Verdi”, “Bonelli”, “Evi”, “Art.1MDP”, “MDP”, “Speranza”, “Sinistra Italiana”, “Fratoianni”, “governo”, “parlamento”, “Draghi”, “Mattarella”, “elezioni”, “Impegno civico”, “Tabacci”, “Di Maio”, “Grillo”. 2 July: 21–23, 25–26, 28–29; August: 2–4, 8, 23, 31; September: 2, 5–9, 13–16, 18–19, 21–23. 3 July: 21; August: 8, 11, 14–16, 18–19, 22, 26; September: 5, 7–9, 12–16, 18–19, 21, 23, 25.

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English stop words and an additional set of terms (e.g. the na created when combining the strings, the name of certain news brands and the elements of URLs like www) to reduce the noise in the data—were processed. For each peak, the best number of clusters was identified by manually inspecting the diagnostic charts created by fitting LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) models with a cluster number ranging between 10 and 100—and then running the algorithm with the chosen number of clusters. The topic modelling was performed using the textmineR package. Each topic identified for each peak was automatically labelled and manually inspected. As a result of these inspections, we manually aggregated similar topics and removed non-political ones. We then calculated the prevalence of each aggregated topic in each peak. Finally, a qualitative analysis of posts in each peak to reconstruct the main narratives of the political campaign was carried out.

Index

A Abstainer, Abstainers, 61, 131, 140, 145, 150, 152 Abstension (involuntary, impediment), 143, 144 Aeriform, 56 Algocracy, 14 Anxious, anxiety, 17, 25, 45, 75, 110, 148 Audience democracy, 5 Azione (AZ), 12, 27, 34, 59 B Ballot box, 138 Berlin Wall, v, vi, 4 Berlusconi, Silvio, vi, vii, 2, 5, 19, 20, 26, 28, 29, 31, 37, 53, 88, 92, 100, 101, 107, 119, 124, 125, 138 Berlusconism, 5, 13 Bersani, Pierluigi, 91 Bipolarity, 4, 13, 35, 37 Bribe city, 2, 25 Broad field (Campo largo), 12, 15, 33

Brunetta, Renato, 91

C Calenda, Carlo, 12, 15, 16, 27, 34, 59, 112, 119, 127 Casta, 11 Catholic Church, 4, 6 Challengers, challenging party, 138, 152 Church-going, 6 Citizenship income, viii, 18, 27, 93, 109, 112 Civic duty, 72, 136, 140 Civis nobilis , 74 Clean hands, 2, 4 Consultellum, 10 Conte, Giuseppe, viii, 12, 15, 18, 34, 46, 47, 59, 110, 112, 118, 126 Contentious politics, 148 Cosmopolitanism, 8 Covid-19, 29, 33, 109, 111, 120 Critical election, 58, 63 CrowdTangle, 81

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9

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D Democratic Party (PD), vi, vii, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15–18, 26, 27, 29, 32–34, 37–41, 44, 46, 48, 57, 58, 61, 108, 111, 112, 114, 117–120, 122, 125, 126 Detachment, ix, 6, 14, 75, 136, 145 Digital, ix, 6, 14, 27, 54, 60, 64, 65, 69, 148, 150 Digitalisation, 54 Di Maio, Luigi, vii, 6, 47, 112 Displacement, 57 Draghi, Mario, viii, 15, 17, 18, 31–33, 47, 60, 75, 76, 82, 83, 90, 99, 100, 110, 118, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 149 E Echo-chambers, 14, 63 Economic malaise, 18 Economic miracle, 7 Egotropic, 114, 149 Election campaign, 13, 14, 20, 33, 45, 53, 54, 57, 60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 73–75, 82, 83, 86–88, 90, 93, 94, 96, 99–101, 109, 146 Election turnout, 11, 12, 29, 35, 72, 73, 138 Electoral market, 25, 53 Electoral mobility, 47, 54 Electoral movement, 54, 74, 111 Electoral volatility, 7, 13–15, 25, 53, 74, 136 EU, European Union, 119, 136, 149 F Face-to-face communication, 14, 63, 65 Filter bubbles, 14, 63 First order election, 132

First Republic, v, vi, 2, 4, 6, 53, 106, 136, 151 Five-Star Movement (M5S), vii, viii, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 15–18, 26, 27, 29, 31–39, 41, 44–48, 53, 57, 58, 91, 93, 106, 107, 109–112, 114, 117–120, 122, 124–127, 137 Forza Italia (FI), vi, 2, 26, 28, 53, 93, 96, 114 Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), v, viii, ix, 3, 11, 18–20, 26–29, 31, 33, 39–41, 44–47, 53, 57, 59, 92, 95, 101, 107, 110, 111, 117, 119, 122, 125

G Gaseous , 56 Globalisation, 8, 9, 17, 25, 27, 32, 108–110, 114, 125, 126, 148, 151 Government crisis, 60, 83, 88, 89, 99 Great Recession, 108, 134, 136 Grillo, Beppe, vii, 6, 27, 107, 119

H Hybrid ecosystem, 54, 63

I Imperfect two-party system, v, 4 Information, 14, 54, 63–73, 132, 146, 148, 151 Instagram, 14, 81–90, 92, 96–101 Italian Political Transition, 4 Italia Viva (IV), 12, 27, 34, 59

J Judicial investigation, 2, 4

INDEX

L Last-minute voters, 14, 56, 57, 60, 72 Latecomes, 56 Late-deciders, 14 Left and right, 57, 111, 112, 119 Left behind, 8, 27, 126 Left-right spectrum, 27, 54, 57, 71–73 Legacy media, 14, 54, 64, 67, 69, 76, 80 Lega (League), vii, 6, 26, 53, 82, 106 Letta, Enrico, 12, 15, 19, 33, 126 Liquid, 6, 56 Losers of globalisation, 17, 18, 108, 114

M Manifestos, 71, 91, 95, 101, 144 Mani pulite, 2 Mattarella, Sergio, 9, 99 Mattarellum, 5, 9 Mediatization, 7, 20, 54 Meloni, Giorgia, v, viii, 3, 11, 17–20, 26, 28, 36, 53, 76, 82, 88, 89, 92, 94–96, 100, 101, 107, 110, 117, 119, 122, 124, 125 Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement, M5S), vii, 2, 26, 53, 91, 106, 137 Mussolini, Benito, 7

N Next Generation EU, 17, 19, 33, 75, 110, 120 Noi Moderati (We Moderates), 26 Non-voting, 132, 136, 138, 140, 142, 150

O On-line chat, 67

161

P Participation, ix, 9, 15, 33, 34, 67, 69, 71, 107, 126, 132–136, 138, 141–145, 148 Partito Democratico (PD), vi, 26, 37, 57, 108 Party democracy, 4, 7, 109, 136 Peppa Pig, 94, 101 Permanent campaign, 53 Personalisation, 5, 107 Platform, 6, 27, 44, 54, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70, 80–82, 87, 90, 93, 99–101, 109, 144 Political detachment, 144 Political integration, 132, 145, 149, 151 Political interest, 62, 132, 134, 135, 145, 146, 150 Political malaise, 18, 108, 109, 118, 125, 136, 152 Political marketing, 53, 61 Populism, populist, 6, 8, 9, 13, 17, 25, 27–29, 46, 81, 106–110, 118, 119, 124, 126, 127, 134, 137, 144, 152 Porcellum, 5, 9 Positive apathy, 145 Post-election survey, 61, 108, 118, 140 Presidentialisation, 5, 54 Presidentialism, 98 Prima Repubblica. See First Republic Protest (political), 2, 13, 18, 25, 35, 44, 108, 109, 137, 144 R Rape video, 88, 96 Red belt (Zona rossa), vii, ix, 4, 36–38 Renzi, Matteo, vi, 6, 12, 15, 16, 27, 29, 33, 34, 59, 112, 119, 127 Representation, 19, 74, 76, 110, 112, 132, 134, 138, 144, 145, 151

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Rights, 32, 96, 97, 101, 109 Rosatellum, 10, 13, 25, 34, 60 Rosato, Ettore, 10 Russia, 17, 124

TikTok, 61, 88, 92, 100, 101 Topic modelling, 82 Tripolarity, 16 Tripolar system, 15

S Salvini, Matteo, vii, 6, 26, 28, 38, 53, 58, 94, 99, 107, 110, 114, 117, 119, 124 Satisfaction, dissatisfaction, 18, 35, 36, 109, 114, 118, 126, 144, 146, 149, 151 Second-order election, 138 Seconda Repubblica. See Second Republic Second Republic, 2–5, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20, 37, 53, 106, 107, 136, 138 Sentiment of belonging , 55 Silent revolution, 7 Social media, 14, 63, 65, 68, 69, 71, 76, 80–83, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 99–101, 109, 110

U Ukraine, Ukrainian, 17, 18, 34, 60, 75, 89, 101, 108–110, 117, 119–121, 124–126 Undecided voters, 53

T Tangentopoli, 2, 25, 29, 36 Telegram, 64, 67, 71 Televised party, 53

V Vote of belonging, 4, 52 Voters’ behaviour, 80 Voting choice, ix, 7, 14, 24, 55, 56, 72, 73, 108 Voting decision, 13, 54, 55, 60, 74 Voto Fuori Sede campaign, 61 W War, v, 4, 17, 34, 36, 75, 88, 89, 101, 108, 110, 111, 120–122, 124–126, 132 Whatsapp, 64, 67, 71 White area (Zona bianca), 4 Winners of globalisation, 126