Political parties and corruption: the opinion of Italian people

There is nothing new in the fact that Italian politics, rightly or wrongly, are not considered in a very positive way by Italian people - and abroad as well -, but a recent survey allows us to quantify in a precise way the extent of Italian’s mistrust towards their political class. The survey has been carried out by Demos & Pi and Demetra for the North-East Italian newspaper Gazzettino and concerns only some Italian regions, more precisely in the North-East of Italy (Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and the province of Trento), trying to understand how the politicians of the so-called “Second Republic” are considered in comparison to the ones of the “First Republic”.

The participants in the survey have been asked whether they consider the nowadays political system as better or worse than the previous one, and if they think that political corruption has increased, decreased or is the same as the one that characterised the First Republic and the scandals of “Mani pulite”.

The survey shows that the judgement of the Italian people living in the North-East of Italy about the Second Republic is pretty strict: more than half of the people that have been interviewed (59%, while in 2007 “only” 32% answered in this way), consider nowadays’ politicians as worse than the ones of the First Republic. As far as parties are concerned, the disaffection of this part of Italy towards politics is even more evident: 67% judge the modern parties in a negative way (in 2007 the percentage was 35%). What about corruption, another sore point for Italian politics? The 54% of the people that have been interviewed believe that corruption is more widespread now than in the past, and this datum is even more meaningful if you consider that in 2003 this percentage was much lower (22%).

Both nowadays parties and single politicians are judged in a negative way by most people living in the North-East regions of Italy, and this opinion seems to be that of all the electors, but the electors of PD, IDV and SEL seem to be more critical than the ones of PDL, Lega Nord and FLI. Considering the profile of the interviewed people from the point of view of age, you can see some differences between young people (15-24 year old) and adults over 65 years on the one hand and 55-64 year-olds from the other hand: while the latter are very critical of the parties, young and older people show to be more disaffected about parties’ leaders.

As for corruption, once again the most critical ones are the electors of PD and IDV (along with those of UDC), but the supporters of other parties are not much more positive.

Certainly a not very reassuring picture emerges from the survey, as an evidence of Italians’ disaffection about a political class that seems to have lost electors’ trust, especially in the last few years. Since many changes are occurring in the Italian political situation these days, one might ask whether all this will changes something also in the electors’ minds. Posterity will judge!