ROME — Italian voter confidence in the government of Giuseppe Conte has declined by 20 percentage points since mid-March and now sits at just above 30 percent, according to a poll released Wednesday by Tecnè.
According to the survey, 53.1 percent of Italians are looking for a change of executive, with 33.3 percent proposing a government of national unity and 19.8 requesting an early vote.
If that vote were to happen, the survey notes, the populist Lega Party is still in first place among voters at 25.6 percent while the progressive Democratic Party (PD) has crept up to 20.2 percent. The center-right Fratelli d’Italia (FDI) — a presumptive coalition party for the Lega — is now at 15.8 percent, slightly higher that the Five Star Movement at 14.8 percent. Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is stable at 8.2 percent and Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva languishes at 3.1 percent.
These numbers reflect the latest voting intentions of Italians when asked whom they would vote for if elections were held today.
“There is an impressive volatility and in the age of light parties, a small breeze is enough to make them fly high or make them fall ruinously to the ground,” said Carlo Buttaroni, President of the Tecnè polling institute, in response to the latest survey.
One significant cause of voter dissatisfaction with the present government stems from very gloomy data on the economy, Buttaroni noted, which is having “an increasingly harsh impact on people’s daily lives.”
“In short, it is a government that does not enjoy great appreciation,” he said. “And as the economic crisis bites into people’s lives, the government will suffer even more.”
From pensioners and civil servants account for the majority of positive judgments toward the government, since they have been more protected from the economic fallout of the lockdown, “the most critical are the self-employed, where positive judgments do not even reach 20 percent,” Buttaroni said.
Meanwhile, Matteo Salvini’s leadership of the Lega Party seems solid for the moment, Buttaroni noted. Salvini di, after all, take the Lega from an insignificant four percent of voters and lifted it to 26 percent.
“I believe that Salvini can be called into question only in the event of two circumstances,” Buttaroni said. “The first, the League returns to below 17 percent as the result of the latest policies and the second, if Salvini were to go to government and govern badly.”