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M5S in the ballots: abstention or vote for the centre-right

VOTE ANALYSIS CARRIED OUT BY THE CATTANEO INSTITUTE - Voters who had voted for M5S in the first round of the administrative elections largely chose abstention in the run-off, or preferred to side with the centre-right, confirming that they were motivated by "political" reasons linked in opposition to the centre-left and Matteo Renzi

M5S in the ballots: abstention or vote for the centre-right

How they behaved in administrative ballots the voters who two weeks ago had chosen the candidates of the 5 Star Movement, then excluded from the second round in all the most important cities called to vote? They are indicated in the graph below flows outgoing from the M5s in twelve cities on the ballot. In practice, each bar tells us how 25 voters voted on Sunday 100 June, according to the estimates of the "Goodman model", who two weeks ago had voted for "Grillo's party".

Before observing what emerges from these data, we can recall that the flows of the first round (those that estimated the dynamics of the votes with respect to the 2013 policies or with respect to the 2012 municipal policies) had indicated that the losses suffered by the M5s - where they did not end in abstention - were generally intercepted more by the centre-right than by the centre-left.

And in the ballots? As seen in the graph, abstention is the main reservoir where the M5S voter ends up. In 7 of the 12 cities analyzed (in order of size: Parma, Catanzaro, Como, Piacenza, Genoa, Alessandria, Verona), more than half of the electorate choose this destination. In other cities (Lecce or Pistoia) it is a share close to half that chooses the "non-vote" option.

Between the two camps of centre-right and centre-left – in most cases – it is the first to attract the five-star voter the most. In some cases this occurs with considerable deviations (this is the case in particular ofAquila, where almost three quarters of the Cinquestelle voters are heading towards the centre-right candidate), other times with more contained waste.

The exceptions are three. The most obvious one is represented by Lecce, where half of the "grillini" flock to the center-left candidate making a significant contribution to his comeback victory. TO La Spezia, the prevalence of the centre-left is less and even less is that recorded a Catanzaro.

What emerges it is therefore not a unique framework. More in-depth investigations into individual local contexts are needed to formulate more precise hypotheses relating to the reasons that led individual candidates from one or the other camp to attract or reject five-star voters.

However, it emerges with a certain clarity that the centre-right is generally more attractive to M5S voters “orphans” of their candidate. Calculating the arithmetic mean of the 11 cities where the centre-left is present (there is none in Verona) 18,3% of the Cinquestelle voters opt for this alignment in the ballot.

The arithmetic mean of the 11 cities where the centre-right is present (there is none in Parma) tells us instead that it is 32,1% who choose this port. Taking into account that even in the first round the flows outgoing from the M5s had rewarded the center-right more than the center-left, we can therefore say that it seems to be confirmed the hypothesis of a consolidation, in the Cinquestelle electorate, of "political" motivations for voting led by the opposition to the centre-left and its current leader Matteo Renzi.

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