Economic Status and Elections: The Voting Behaviour and Economic Hardship in Rome

Abstract

Empirical research shows the existence of a relationship between the electoral behaviour of citizens and their economic condition. The economic voting theory explains that in periods of economic growth citizens-voters reward the government considered the author of their well-being; on the contrary, in times of crisis, the population punishes it. The peculiarity of these studies, based on the analysis of secondary data designed for other primary purposes, is to have national territorial dimension, where the percentage of votes collected by government/opposition parties in political national elections is associated to the country’s macro-economic indicators (for example, GDP or unemployment rate). Nevertheless, up to now, only few scholars have analysed this relationship at local level, due to the lack of local statistical data on citizens’ economic conditions. This study tries to fill this gap. It is conducted in the city of Rome, to understand whether the electoral behaviour of Roman citizens changes in function of their economic hardship, in each of the 15 Municipalities of the capital city of Italy. To this end, two different data sources are integrated: Electoral Statistical Office of Rome and Italian Revenue Agency. The results offer empirical evidence to strengthen the local relation between electoral behaviour and economic conditions.