Home » An election campaign for old people – Alessandro Gilioli

An election campaign for old people – Alessandro Gilioli

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An election campaign for old people – Alessandro Gilioli

The range of potential voters between 18 and 30 years old in Italy is made up of 7.7 million people, a group in which abstention goes from 30 percent of 2018 policies to 50 percent of 2019 Europeans (thus taking into account considering the latest consultations involving the entire electoral body, apart from the referendum). This means that the under 30s who will go to the polls in September can be calculated between 2.3 and 3.8 million. Given the trend, perhaps less and hardly more.

The group of potential voters over 55 is instead made up of 24.7 million people. The abstention rate of this population group is, on average, 15 percentage points lower than that of the under 35s, so it is conceivable that in the next elections there will be about 11-12 million “seniors” who will go to vote.

In other words, albeit with a certain margin of approximation, it is likely that on 25 September at least three voters over 55 for every voter under 35 will turn up.

This gap easily explains the departure of the electoral campaign of the right, all centered on the issue of pensions. Silvio Berlusconi promises a “minimum” of one thousand euros, Matteo Salvini is committed to reforming the Fornero law by reducing the years of seniority necessary to retire from work to 41, regardless of age.

But there is more, and it is the so-called pull factor, that is the element that according to the scholars of electoral flows can attract to the polls. The promise of better pensions is considered very relevant for the elderly, uncertain between going to vote and abstaining. On the other hand, one of the largest has weakened considerably pull factor youth teams of 2018, i.e. the 5-star Movement.

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It will therefore be an electoral campaign aimed more at the elderly than at the young. Which means, among other things, that the role of television will still be very important and that of the internet and social networks, apart from Facebook, will still be very important.

But it also means something else: that in the absence of greater revenues from general taxation (given the right’s commitment not to raise taxes), if the promises on pensions of Berlusconi and Salvini were kept they would translate into a displacement of resources towards the elderly population group – the so-called boomers – taking them from services and subsidies for everyone, including young people.

And at the end of all this there is also a more strictly political consideration. In the United States and France, Bernie Sanders and Jean-Luc Mélenchon managed to mobilize the young electorate, as did Podemos in Spain. In Italy, at the moment, there does not seem to be any left or center-left force neither capable nor willing to do the same.

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