What were the main reasons that drove voters to the polls? And, above all, why did they decide to promote or reject the Renzi government's constitutional revision project? Which social strata were most in favor of (or against) the reform? To answer these questions, Istituto Cattaneo analyzed the distribution of the vote in the sections of Bologna to try to understand if the sectors where social unease is greater have had a more critical behavior towards the government and its reform. An analysis of this type is made possible by the existence of socio-demographic data of the population (age, gender, income, presence of immigrants, etc.), disaggregated at the level of single electoral section and made freely available by the municipality of Bologna.
The problem of the Democratic Party in the suburbs, both geographical and "social", had already emerged clearly in the local elections of 2016: in the area, Renzi's party had progressively lost contact and consensus in the weaker social strata, belonging to that "impoverished middle class ” which analysts and commentators are discussing these days. Sunday's constitutional referendum represented a new analytical laboratory in which to verify whether the vote in favor of the reform - supported by the Democratic Party - has "suffered" more in the most disadvantaged or in difficulty areas of Bologna.
The first datum we analyze is that concerning the income of Bolognese citizens: one of the most effective indicators for understanding the social "difficulty" of citizens. Figure 1 shows the percentage distribution of the "no" vote for three income brackets. As can be seen, in the relatively "poorer" sections, the percentage of "no" votes reaches the highest value (51,3%), while it drops by more than 7 percentage points in the sections where the median income of voters exceeds 25 euros. In short, those opposed to the reform (and, perhaps, those most critical of the Renzi government) are concentrated more in the economically weaker areas and districts of the city. Conversely, the vote in favor of Renzi's reform is found above all in the "wealthier" sections. From this point of view, the vote in the constitutional referendum of 4 December seems to have been guided (also) by reasons of an economic and social nature, grasping the "political" side and meaning of the vote rather than the technical-constitutional one on the merits of the reform .
Another indicator that can be used to investigate phenomena of social marginalization is that of age. It is above all the youngest, often precarious and with no guarantees of their future, who pay the highest costs of the economic crisis. Furthermore, on the eve of the referendum it seemed that the younger population was the most critical or least convinced by the constitutional revision promoted by the government. Also in this case, to verify the presence of a link between voting against the reform and the existence of a form of social marginalization, we have aggregated all the Bolognese electoral sections based on the median age of the voters.
As can be seen from figure 2, the percentage of "no" votes is clearly higher in the younger sections (with a median age of less than 45 years), reaching 51,3%. On the contrary, in the sections characterized by an older electorate a vote in favor of the reform prevails (and, consequently, the "no" vote stops at 44,5%). Instead, in the sections with an intermediate median age (between 45 and 50 years) the percentage of those against the reform stands at 47,5%. Therefore, also in this case, the dimension of social marginality (age) seems to be connected to the electoral behavior of the Bolognese citizens. We don't know how much the judgment actually weighed on the merits of the reform; However it seems quite clear that the social or demographic status of the voters has largely oriented the voting choices in Bologna.
Finally, the last indicator that we take into consideration to examine the relationship between social marginality and electoral behavior refers to the issue of immigration and, more specifically, to the presence of foreigners in Bologna society. In the last administrative vote, the "fear of immigration" had played an important role in the behavior of Bolognese (and Italians in general) voters. The presence of immigrants, often relegated to peripheral or poorer areas of the cities, ends up being interpreted as the attestation of a social peripherality which adds to the territorial one.
Consequently, also in this case it is reasonable to expect a negative vote in the "stronger" referendum in those areas of the city where the presence of immigrants is more widespread. Figure 3, aggregating the percentage of foreign people present in each section, clearly shows that the "no" prevails (with 51,3%) in areas where the share of immigrants exceeds 14%, while in the sections where the share of foreigners is less than 7% the vote against the reform stops at 44,4 %.
Therefore, the fact that we have highlighted above finds further confirmation: in the economically or socially most disadvantaged/marginal sections, voters are decidedly more "critical" and use the referendum opportunity to send a signal to the government and to the whole political class. The constitutional referendum has thus also become a pretext for the voters to "reject" the government's actions and give vent to their economic and social malaise.
In summary, the vote in the constitutional referendum of 4 December confirms the orientation of voters to vote "against" the government in office, both in general elections (including local elections) and in referendums. Voting becomes the tool through which citizens express their discontent with a crisis situation – economic and social – from which they still see no way out.
The vote against the establishment, in opposition to the current governing class, found a new channel of expression in the constitutional referendum, transforming a judgment on the reform of the Constitution into an assessment of the work of the Renzi government and the social condition of the voters. If every electoral opportunity is good for expressing one's dissatisfaction, even a constitutional referendum can easily turn into a "social" referendum. With the results that we now know.
