Electoral choice in Italy between old patterns and emerging orientations: evidence from the 2001 general election

Italians’ voting behaviour has shown a remarkable degree of stability for the first thirty years of the post-war period. Until the beginning of the 90s the voters’ behaviour was characterized by a general but gradual dealignment, whose driving forces were both social – an outcome of the impressive Italian social change of post war period – and political. However, voters expressed themselves within the old political and ideological constraints, whose subjective meaning had probably changed in some aspects over the years, but its echo was still effective on voting behaviour. With regard to the General Elections of May 2001, the paper – on the basis of a post-election survey - attempts to answer the question whether Italian voters continue to make their voting choices within the “traditional” framework that dominated Italian politics or there are indications of new factors and socio-psychological mechanisms leading to voting decisions