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Where abstention is wider, less is spent on social issues

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In the region, one in two voters did not go to vote: the power of local party politics is reduced

UDINE. For several decades now, abstention is being discussed at each election.

Beyond the numbers and political analyzes, first of all it is good to remember that the correlation between electoral participation and social spending, at the international level, is very well documented: where abstention is wider, there is less spending on social; and the opposite is also true: where the state is less present there will find fewer voters.

Decades of research clearly show that when participation is low, the poorest, the least educated, the young, i.e. the most vulnerable, those who should need the state the most, vote less.

Even just from these considerations we can understand how important the theme is.

Yet every time a couple of days after the elections the question comes out of the public debate to return only the day after the next elections. And perhaps it is no coincidence: it has been highlighted how fewer voters facilitate party control over the electorate, and vice versa. The parties involved are not very interested in abstentions. Except that abstention from voting does not imply abstention from politics, so we should reflect on how politics is done today when 1 out of 2 citizens do not vote.

We focus on the dynamics of the vote because it is the most solemn moment of weighing the party forces on the field. Compared to the past, however, we observe a reduction in the power of local party politics in the spheres of society, its economy and its environment: a fact that can lead people to divergent choices with respect to parties.

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In fact, there are other democratic areas of action with strong political implications, such as for example critical consumption actions or support for non-profit organizations. There may be those who do not vote but actively participate in the construction of society through other channels, perhaps committing themselves much more every day than those who dedicate themselves to politics only when called to vote. They are also those actions that have a political significance and impact that only pass through the parties, sometimes without even touching them, and perhaps do not find in the vote a better or more complete form of participation or representation.

According to the most recent data, we know that there is in general a modest associative participation compensated, at least apparently, by a strong individual interest in discussion and political choices. In Italy, in 2020, less than 1 citizen out of 4 participates (22.3%) in political activity, understood at party, trade union or trade association level; in the region things are a little better: 27.2% (however, I would like to point out that the Istat figure inexplicably also takes into account those who “pay a monthly or periodic fee for a sports club / club”!).

While over 70% participate in the informal political discussion in the region (Italy: 62.5%). And here we return to the point before: there are many individual avenues to politics, made in part within small local organizations or built on micro-iinterests, which move with dynamics different from those codified in the activity of parties and voting.

Paths that, in the time that separates one electoral round from the other, do not seem to find ways to join together in broader and more ambitious positions, capable of affecting the great collective issues and thus of mobilizing larger sections of the population to vote.

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