How the social classes voted in the referendum
The in-depth analysis by Claudio Negro of the Kuliscioff Foundation
Observes Fubini in the online Corriere that in the referendum on Sunday 20 September the No won almost only in the neighborhoods of large cities where the standard of living of residents, derived from the amount of rents and the value of the properties, is higher and where more the incidence of graduates is high, and therefore the cultural level. Obviously, this observation should be deepened with other indicators, for example of a fiscal nature (by crossing tax returns and municipal taxes with the addresses of taxpayers), the schooling rate and the breakdown between the different types of educational institutions in the area, the number of newspapers sold, etc. However, there is no doubt that the indicators used by Fubini already outline a social group with quite clear characteristics: middle and high income people, professionals, self-employed workers, employees with managerial responsibilities, and the like.
COMPARISON WITH THE 2016 REFERENDUM
However, it would be a grave mistake to think that we are dealing with conservative "elites", enemies of change and nostalgic for the good old days. It is enough to make a simple comparison with the referendum vote of 2016 (constitutional change wanted by Renzi): the Yes of the time are almost overlapping with the No of now. The 2016 vote called for explicit consent to a vastly reforming plan, intended to separate the nature and competences of the two Chambers, to a new institutional model of the Executive, to new electoral procedures. Everything can be said, except that it pleased conservative designs. Well: in Milan, Yes prevailed in 6 out of 9 Municipalities, with peaks above 60% in the Cerchia dei Navigli. The Yes was diluted as it passed from the Center to the Periphery, until it became No outside the metropolitan area, but returned to being Yes in the urban areas of the main Lombard cities.
A trend completely comparable to that of the recent referendum, changing the Yes to the No, and bearing in mind that the current No's are lower in number than the Yes of 2016. Why? Probably due to fatigue, as well as a greater grip on the populist argument: let's take revenge on the caste by sending them home! We can legitimately believe that those who voted No today did so in controversy with those who ditched an overall and functional reform 4 years ago to now propose a useless cut in representation, ridiculous without all the rest of the constitutional reform. However, the analysis (we have made it explicit about Milan, but all the medium-large cities of the North return similar trends) has an important confirmation in the administrative elections: while the "countryside" and the smaller towns generally vote to the right (see results of the regional elections ) cities and usually the most urbanized centers vote on the left: Milan, Brescia, Bergamo, Varese, Mantua, etc. But the vote seems to move from a left choice from the city center to one towards the right going to the suburbs.
RIGHT AND LEFT
Are we facing a weird re-edition of the "class vote" in which the lower classes vote on the right and the hegemonic classes on the left? We should agree, as Gaber said, on what is right and what is left. Left for decades has been a guarantee of providence for the poor and for workers who needed protection at work and in society. But, look a bit ', at a certain point the workers, especially in the factories of the North, thought that someone could have better protected them with respect to needs that seemed fundamental: lower taxes and retire earlier. And this need has been answered (for some time, as FIOM research has already indicated in recent years) in the watchwords of the League. The sense of uncertainty, fear, mistrust in the future caused by the latest economic crises has generated mistrust and hostility towards all that is "alien" (the EU, immigrants) and towards any change: closing oneself up in the known reality and approving only that which strengthens it (war on the "caste", because when you are afraid you need a guilty person to punish; extension of welfare assistance, because it comforts and gives security); all this translates into political sovereignty and autarchic aspirations in economics. It must also be said that these positions are reflected in many choices of the Union, very concerned with perpetuating the protections inherited from the 1900s for its representatives (industrial workers, teachers, public employees), thus providing "left" coverage for claims that instead they float on the surface of a complex of strongly conservative and often reactionary ideas.
In essence, we find ourselves in a situation in which the most educated, enterprising and affluent classes vote for those who propose reforms and openness to the new, while the more "popular" classes (let's call them provisionally like this) vote for those who ask for conservation and closing.
THE COINCIDENCE BETWEEN VOTE AND INCOME BANDS
It is interesting to note the partial but significant coincidence between electoral choices and tax contribution ranges (and therefore of declared income). Almost 60% of taxpayers range from a negative tax up to a maximum of € 150 / month. All the main tax benefits and assistance are concentrated in this bracket (exemptions from ticket and taxes, deductions, citizenship income, income supplements, pension support, etc.). To understand, the highest incomes of this range are € 20,000 / year, therefore about 1,500 gross per month: an average salary, even if not low, for an employee. It is obvious that the vast majority of income tax evaders are also hidden in this band, starting with undeclared workers and employers, but this does not change the specific trait of this group: they are citizens who would struggle to live without assistance, and therefore their first concern is that the system does not change. Innovation, meritocracy, social mobility are frightening prospects. They mostly choose the political option that guarantees the preservation of the system.
Conversely, higher-tier taxpayers benefit much less from assistance, and are more interested in increasing their income, therefore they see innovation as an opportunity, meritocracy as a recognition of enterprise, social mobility as an objective to be pursued. They privilege reforming political choices and consider the current system as unsuitable to promote them, inefficient, intrusive and substantially borne by a minority that pays assistance to a majority.
It is clear that this is a simplification, and that in each band there are different electoral orientations, but if we overlap the income bands with the taxpayers' areas of residence we see, as mentioned at the beginning, that largely confirm this analysis.
Let's hazard a conclusion: the less well-off classes support a welfare state conquered in the 1900s by the political left, social Catholicism and the trade union; in doing so they adhere to ideas of sovereignty and authoritarianism that were typical of the conservative right. The more educated and affluent classes are oriented on political choices that favor business and individual freedoms, equality of opportunity rather than egalitarianism, the change of the system in its critical junctions (assistance, taxation, education). The former are in favor of the presence of the state in the business system to ensure that they aim for the common profit and not profit, the latter are against because they do not want taxpayers' money to be spent to ensure employment in companies with no future or in useless bureaucracies.
If we wanted to stick "twentieth century" labels, the former would be conservative, the latter liberals. With the difference that the conservatives of the 800-900 defended the interests of a privileged and minority upper class, defeated in fact with the prevalence of universal suffrage, while today they represent a protected and majority lower class.
From this point of view, the “2-thirds society” theorem turns into its opposite: two thirds of clients and one third who pays for their assistance.
This is obviously a simplification with respect to the reality of individual choices, which is more jagged. But I believe that overall it represents quite the picture of the intersection between social classes and political choices.
After that, having taken note with all possible impartiality of the scenario that I have tried to describe, I take the liberty of expressing with the greatest possible understatement a judgment that I take from Mattia Feltri on Huffington Post : bipolarism is no longer between right and left but between who no longer trusts the rules of Western liberal democracy and who still trusts them, stubbornly, to the end. From here we have to start again.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/referendum-bipolarismo-democrazia/ on Tue, 29 Sep 2020 05:05:49 +0000.