I’ll tell you about the electoral swings of leaders and parties
History and chronicle of the ups and downs of leaders and political parties between history and news
The woodpeckers, not the birds that with their hard beaks manage to break the bark of the tree, but the woodpeckers understood as soaring, especially those of the parties in their electoral competitions, produce more problems for those who follow them than anything else. When the successes are too sudden they cause dizziness and confirm the proverb taken from the verse of a burlesque work of 1734 which says: "Whoever climbs too high often falls precipitously". This is confirmed by the comparison made by Anna Ghisleri between a survey just carried out with her Euromedia Research and the previous electoral results, starting with the 2014 European vote, no more than six years away. During which the balances have changed perhaps more profoundly than we realized chasing the daily news.
That 40.82 percent of votes suddenly gathered in the 2014 European elections gave Matteo Renzi an almost fatal thrill both as secretary of the Democratic Party and as prime minister. First he lost the government, in 2016, overestimating his strength to the point of personalizing the confirmatory referendum on the constitutional reform that he had proudly registered. Then he lost the unity of the party with the split in which he boldly challenged the various Bersani and D'Alema in 2017, while others advised him, even from Colle, to avoid it. Finally he lost the party secretariat in 2018, causing him to leave the polls for the renewal of the Houses with 18.76 percent of the votes.
Now Renzi is reduced to playing his own personal game, with the improvised movement last year, announcing one day yes and the other as well as horse moves on the political chessboard without detaching his Italia Viva from percentages more frequently below than above 3 for percent of the votes in the polls for each brand or license plate. He set out to surprise critics and opponents in the regional, supplementary and municipal elections of 20 and 21 September, in which he chose, for example in Puglia, or in Liguria, or in Sassari to replace a deceased grillina senator, to oppose the choices of the Democratic Party. We'll see.
Another electoral peak of great uproar was that of the grillini two years ago, with that 32.68 per cent of votes which, although less than the 35.70 per cent of the center-right that came out of the League's traction polls, allowed the pentastellati to achieve a half political bingo allying himself to the government with Matteo Salvini's leaguers, and imposing on them as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. That the same grillini before the elections had assessed the umpteenth, bureaucratic reform or public administration, in the list of the single-color 5-star government deposited with great euphoria in the hands of the Secretary General of the Quirinale with great euphoria.
Less than a year later, in the 2019 European elections, that 32.68 percent would already have dropped to 17.07. And to the full advantage of Salvini, who climbed in the same period from 17.35 to 34.33.
But even to Salvini that sudden peak was not fatal but almost, leaving him the margin of movement left him by the fact that the center-right, where "the captain" returned without ever leaving it locally, in the Ghisleri survey of 28 August this 2020 overcomes the so-called center-left and the grillini together.
Now, however, the Northern League leader, who dropped to 25.2 per cent of the votes, must guard himself in the coalition from that 14.3 reached by Giorgia Meloni with her brothers in Italy starting from 3.67 of the 2014 European elections, in a progression never interrupted, unlike the League, which also rose from only 6.6 of the 2014 European elections but in the end forced to descend from that too high point reached in 2019.
What lesson should be drawn from these data I anticipated a little with that proverb taken from a comic opera from the distant 1700s. It is dangerous to get crazy with successes so quickly achieved in a political context that is nothing short of liquid, where everything changes quickly from day to day, and in the same span of a day.
Instead I see that everyone challenges everyone, and everything, in an endless race that takes the breath away of every leader and party: a race in which there are those – we will see if more courageously or recklessly – within the anomalous government majority created last year against a Salvini perhaps too overrated, given what would have happened to him, he is betting on overcoming the difficult regional elections next month, the confirmatory referendum on cuts to parliamentary seats , although the desire for no is growing, and of the municipal elections in the spring of 2021. And all this in order to arrive unscathed, without early elections, in the shelter of the last and blank semester of Sergio Mattarella's mandate at the Quirinale, and then to the parliamentary election of his successor, in 2022. And finally at the deadline ordinary of the legislature, in 2023.
I wonder if there isn't too much ambition in this kind of scenario, or too much recklessness. I wonder if the various Zingaretti and Di Maio are not doing like the Rosalina of the nursery rhyme who boldly carried ricotta on her head to sell it on the market and gradually realize who knows how many and what earnings in a fantasy interrupted by the ruinous fall of the basket to the ground.
Article published on Doubt
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/vi-racconto-le-altalene-elettorali-di-leader-e-partiti/ on Sat, 05 Sep 2020 05:00:00 +0000.