PASQUALE SCARAMOZZINO

L'astensionismo elettorale in Italia e in Europa. Un quadro sintetico

N. 186

Summary — Over the last twenty years in Italy, electoral abstention has been an ever increasing phenomenon, with the consequence that the degree of participation, which oscilated around an average of 93.2% in the general elections from 1948 to 1976, has decreased since 1979, reaching 82.9% (partly as a result of the new electoral system) in the last general election of 1996. In absolute terms, the number of abstainers was 3.95 million in 1979, and rose to 8.35 million in 1996. In the same period, the number of nonvalid votes (spoilt and blank ballot papers) also increased. Thus, summing the non-valid votes and the abstentions, there turn out to have been over 11.5 million members of the electorate who in the last general election were not part of the political process. At the European level, nonvoting in Italy is lower than in France, Finland, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany and Holland. However, the gap between Italy and the most abstentionist countries has narrowed. Twenty years ago, the rate of abstentionism (non-voting and non-valid votes) in Italy was twenty points lower than that of the most abstentionist country, and Italy came eleventh in the EUR ordering. Today, the gap is only one of 12 points, and Italy comes seventh in the ordering, behind only France, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, the United Kingdom and Greece.