Abstention. Any analysis of the vote in Naples can only start from the deserted ballot boxes, from those 470,232 voters on 744,368 who despite the two days available stayed away from the polls, without even deigning to put down a blank or blank ballot, an outmoded choice and now limited to 6,669 active protesters, half of 2022. But also among that minority of Neapolitan citizens who deposited the ballot (37 out of 100 eligible voters) there is no shortage of anomalous behaviour, at least if we follow the analyzes on electoral flows carried out immediately by the Cattaneo Institute on the basis of the real data of the individual polling stations.
The most sensational case, both in terms of numbers and specificity compared to the other large cities studied by Cattaneo, is the transit of voters from the vote for the Cinquestelle in the elections of 25 September 2022 directly to that for the Brothers of Italy. In Naples as many as sixteen out of one hundred voters of the party of Giorgia Meloni two years ago they voted for the movement of Giuseppe Conte. A similar phenomenon is recorded only in Messina but to a decidedly less intense extent (five out of 100) while in the other thirteen cities studied the flow from M5s to FdI, if any, is so small as to have no statistical significance. I study excludes Rome for the delay in communicating data from the sections.
The betrayals
Yet Naples holds a positive record for the movement founded by Beppe Grillo because it is the city among the fifteen with the greatest loyalty (or, if you prefer, with the lowest rate of betrayal) of the electorate: in Naples 43 out of 100 they confirmed second the Cattaneo Institute the choice of 2022 while in Milan and Bari there were just 23 out of 100. However, while in the Milanese capital the choice of former Cinquestelle it went above all towards abstention (68%) and in Bari towards the Democratic Party thanks to the Antonio Decaro magnet (67%), in the Campania capital the diaspora has been diversified, with a prevalence towards abstention, and a flow more or less equally divided between left-wing formations (especially PD) and the centrist or government area, with Fratelli d’Italia among the destinations. In absolute terms it is possible to translate the percentage points into 5,750 real voters, i.e. people who in less than two years went from trusting Conte to trusting Meloni.
Cattaneo’s analysis focuses on three macro-phenomena: the clear defeat of the Cinquestelle, the advance in percentage terms (but not in votes) of the Brothers of Italy and the growth both in percentage and in votes of the Democratic Party. In the background remain other evaluations on the vote for the European elections on 8 and 9 June: the homogeneous growth on the national territory of Green Left Alliance; the boom in the Forza Italia Islands; the League which retreats slightly in the North but recovers in the South and in the Islands; the decline of the Third Pole, with the exception of the southern Italian constituency.
I strip it
In Naples, looking at the real votes, the Cinquestelle are more than halved by passing from 145,753 to 71,074 with the percentage falling from 41.5% to 26.6%. Fratelli d’Italia grows from 12.4% to 13.2% but with voters reduced from 43,656 to 35,447. The Democratic Party increases the percentage from 17.1% to 27.7% and the votes from 60,001 to 71,323.
An approximate reading of the numbers might lead one to think, for example, that more than half of the Cinquestelle voters moved towards other parties or abstained and that the remaining 71,000 confirmed their choice for 2022. In reality, «the mere comparison between the the stock of votes of the parties in two elections – the Institute notes – is not sufficient to explain the vote shifts that actually occurred, as they mask the real vote flows which can even produce zero balances”. In other words, according to the research institute active since 1965, even if two parties in two successive votes retained exactly the same votes, there could be cross flows such as to balance each other. This is why, thanks to the cross-referencing of seat-by-seat data, the Cattaneo Institute is able to estimate the real flows and reduce from 71 thousand to 62,700 M5s voters who confirmed the 2022 vote. Similarly, one could be led to believe that the number of votes of the Brothers of Italy has contracted due to lower participation in the vote. The impact of not voting is being felt, obviously. But less than half of the 35,447 votes came from 2022 voters Brothers of Italy and the rest is gathered from consensus coming from other parties, including the Five Star Movement and, to a lesser extent, the Democratic Party. The prevailing vote pool among the party’s incoming flows Giorgia Meloni it comes from the former Third Pole, i.e. from voters of Matteo Renzi, Carlo Calenda and Emma Bonino who in 2024 remained disoriented and moved closer to one of the main “two poles”. Well, in Naples the attractive capacity of the right is decidedly prevalent given that 18 out of 100 Brothers of Italy voters (therefore 6,380) in the 2022 elections had voted for the Third Pole or for More Europe. The Democratic Party also collects from the outgoing votes of the centrists, however barely one hundredth of its 71,323 votes comes from the area Renzi-Calenda-Bonino. This is equivalent to saying that every ten former third party voters who chose between the two main Italian parties in Naples preferred the prime minister to her challenger Elly Schlein.
The Democratic Party, however, has several strengths on its side. In the meantime it has become the first party in the city and has also shown good attractiveness. If for example in Bologna well 84 PD voters out of 100 they are nothing more than confirmations of the 2022 vote, in Naples the confirmations are 59 out of a hundred, with arrivals mainly from Cinquestelle (28 out of 100), with a flow size exceeded only in Bari.
There is even, the Cattaneo institute always points out, an exchange of flows between Pd and FdI. Four out of a hundred voters Brothers of Italy in 2022 they had voted for the Democrats, while the opposite flow concerns three out of one hundred voters of the Democratic Party. In absolute values, the transit from right to left is stronger, equal to 2,100 who betrayed Giorgia for Elly, while 1,400 they followed the opposite direction. Modest numbers but which indicate that for many voters there are no insurmountable ideological barriers. We are faced with an increasingly fluid electorate for which the choice between one or another political formation (as well as between voting and not voting) can depend on the conviction of the moment. «We note in this election – underlines the Cattaneo Institute – a higher share of cross flows and contributions from different tributaries than those normally recorded in the past».
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