"Habits and surprises in the Italian’s vote" is the name of the survey of the election rounds of 1996, 2001 and 2006, submitted by Censis today, the day of the yearly commemoration of the founder of the institute, Gino Martinoli, who "still remained alien to politics". A choice that is a "challenge", say president Giuseppe De Rita and General Manager Giuseppe Roma, "given the deluge of surveys which try with increasing difficulty to fix the extreme volatility of our fellow countrymen. In this conditions of "uncertainty" and "political rationalisation", with the "establishment of parties that are the fruit of the concurrence of different political trends", it can help, say the experts, "to outline the basic dominants" which steer the Italians’ electoral choices and settle the contest between the parties. The turnout has however always been "very high": 90 per cent of people with voting rights until the late Seventies, which dropped to a record-breaking low in 2001, with 81.4 per cent, then risen again to 83 per cent in 2006. 32 per cent decide whom to vote for only during the electoral campaign. Especially young people: 35 per cent in the 2001 election, 41 per cent in 2006. 25 per cent of them had no idea whom to vote for at the beginning of the electoral campaign. (continued)
