Urban-centred voters: the case of ‘L’Altra Europa con Tsipras’ in the 2014 European parliament elections in Italy

ABSTRACT

In the 2014 European Parliamentary (EP) elections in Italy, ‘L’Altra Europa con Tsipras’ received about 1,100,000 votes (4.03 per cent), electing three Members of the European Parliament. Its narrow surmounting of the 4 per cent threshold was the result of an uneven distribution of support, with most of the votes concentrated in the biggest cities. In Rome, the Lista Tsipras (LT) got 6.17 per cent; in Milan, 6.48 per cent and in Bologna, 8.89 per cent. This article analyses the characteristics of the ‘urban-centred’ vote for the LT. It then identifies the factors that contributed to this result, showing, in light of the electoral history of the Italian radical left, how LT’ media coverage and the campaign schedules of its candidates help account for its success in urban areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Italian politics
• elections
• social cleavages
• left parties
• political sociology
• political behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Intellectuals such as Andrea Camilleri, Paolo Flores d’Arcais, Marco Revelli and Guido Viale co-authored a manifesto, entitled L’Europa al bivio. Con Tsipras una lista autonoma della società civile, that was published in the newspapers, Il Manifesto and Il Fatto Quotidiano: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/01/18/tsipras-alla-commissione-europea-lappello-degli-intellettuali/848479/ (accessed on 9 September 2015).

^2. Articles 81, 97, 117 and 119 were amended on 20 April 2012, introducing the requirement of a balanced budget at both the national and the regional level, taking into account both positive and negative variations of the economic cycle.

^3. Email interview (11/6/2014).

^4. Email interview (10/6/2014).

^5. SVP (Südtiroler Volkspartei or South Tyrolean People’s Party) is a regionalist and autonomist political party in German-speaking South Tyrol.

^6. Email interview (2/7/2014).

^7. See the official Lista Tsipras website at: http://www.listatsipras.eu/blog/item/2463-esposto-all-agcom.html

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Morini

Marco Morini is senior research fellow in Political Science at the Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy). He has previously been assistant professor in Political Science at the International University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and post-doctoral research fellow in Sociology at Macquarie University (Australia).