The Sicilians deserted the vote to elect new community representatives through the 2024 European elections. The island ranked nineteenth in Italy for turnout (given around 37%), behind only Sardinia. A fact that placed the “Islands constituency” in last place in this special ranking of Italian macro-areas. A fact of which there is nothing to be proud given that voting is a right but above all a civic duty. The 37 municipalities that are about to elect new mayors have thought of giving some substance to the Sicilian data. Where administrative elections were also held, the data showed a notable increase in voters in percentage terms compared to the rest of the island.
Worst seat in the province in Palermo
He thought about clarifying this thesis Caltanissetta, the only provincial capital to have to elect the new mayor, with a figure close to 43%. Palermo, on the other hand, did badly. The capital stands at well below 40% (38.8%, approximately one percentage point less than five years ago). The worst municipality in the province is instead Roccapalumbathe city in which just over 1000 people went to the polls 25% of voters. But in some sections of the Sicilian capital practically total abstention came close. The section with the lowest number of voters was by far the section 63located within the “Turrisi Colonna” school complex, which has reached the unaddressable percentage of 5.30% of those entitled. However, according to some voters of the section in question, an out-of-scale number is the result of a sudden move of the seat of the polling station, previously located in the Casa Professa area.
European elections 2024, low numbers in working-class neighborhoods
In general, however, very little voting took place in the popular neighborhoods of the Sicilian capital. It is difficult to find a section that exceeds 30%. However, there are those who did worse than the others. This is the case of Giovanni Falcone school of Zen. Of the six sections present in the complex, only one managed to exceed 20% (section 115). The other five fell well below this threshold. Indeed, three of these are around 15%. The worst in this sense turned out to be section 439with the 12.13% of those entitled to have gone to the polling station. A fact that makes us reflect in a complex that has ended up at the center of the columns of the news due to judicial events and in which the Municipality of Palermo has invested a lot in terms of the presence of the State, both with an extraordinary City Council meeting and with the active involvement of the school in an urban and social redevelopment project. But that doesn’t seem to have been enough. A real defeat due, in all likelihood, to a disaffection towards politics also and above all dictated by the emergencies that the neighborhood has been experiencing in recent weeks, such as on the waste front.
