Italy 1994!

[SPQR]

Great map!

Lazio in general is very right-wing, except for Rome. And even in Rome, the further you go from the city center, the less leftist it is.
As it is, M5S has made great gains there.


I didn't expect the center-left to do so well in Calabria and Basilicata, nor did I know that there were those strongholds in Sicily (where in 2001 Berlusconi won all 61 constituencies).

[SPQR]

Lazio in general is very right-wing, except for Rome. And even in Rome, the further you go from the city center, the less leftist it is.

Uh, no. The Roma province as a whole is solidly left-wing, and it's large enough to balance out the other 4 provinces and turn Lazio into a battleground region. In 2013 the left coalition beat the right by 2 points. 1994 was clearly exceptional.

I live in Rome, so trust me
The province is definitely more left-wing than the rest of Lazio (doesn't take a lot, really), but since 2013 it's turning more and more pro-M5S.
They have mayors in Pomezia and Civitavecchia, for instance, and in the Constitutional Referendum the results were as ugly (for the Yes) as in the South.

[SPQR]

It seems like I wasn't clear in my previous post so I'll rephrase it.

If you don't consider Rome, Lazio leans center-right, and in particular, fascists or post-fascists have always had very positive results (MSI, AN, FdI, La Destra), especially in the Latina province.

The Rome province is, by far, the most left-wing of the region. Nonetheless, in more recent years, the M5S have managed to make inroads which they haven't really managed to replicate in the rest of the region.

Lastly, if you look at the municipality of Rome, what you see historically (at least, the last 25 years) is that the center-left is very strong in the city center, while the farther you go from it, the more right-wing it leans.
A few years ago the GRA (Grande Raccordo Anulare; the highway which goes around parts of Rome) was considered to be the "limit", as outside of it the center-right would comfortably win. Now the M5S has managed to make great gains in that area, while also making gains in the city center.

[SPQR]

To me it seems that historically speaking the absolute center-left strongholds are not in the city center itself, but in the Eastern semi-center (S. Lorenzo, Pigneto), eastern semi-periphery and parts of the south-western semi-center (Testaccio, Portuense), which are all historically quite working-class. The northern semi-center seems like it has always been quite bourgeois and right-wing. I'm also wondering how much the social composition in different parts of Rome has changed in the recent two decades. I would immagine gentrification processes in some of the semi-center working-class quarters on the one hand.

Well, the definition of city center has somehow changed over time, so that places such as Testaccio would be considered as central. Indeed, Testaccio, Portuense, Monteverde, Trastevere, Garbatella and San Paolo are the historical strongholds, but more generally the center-left has always done well within the GRA, except for the suburbs in northern Rome, which are either very bourgeois (Parioli, for instance) or...very fascists.
If you look at the most recent elections, though, things have changed quite dramatically, with PD (and, at the referendum, the Yes) having a majority in either the very center (Coliseum and the like) or in the more bourgeois areas, and losing badly in Testaccio, Garbatella, Pigneto, San Lorenzo.

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This is absolutely true, and indeed Rome has been an urbanistic disaster for the last 50 to 60 years. The more peripheric areas are mostly the result of illegal settlements which were then recognized officially by the municipality ex-post, contributing to the lack of services and transportation which then isolates those areas even further, driving them towards the right and, in more recent times, the M5S.
The rise in housing prices has driven people out of the center, but rather than being necessarily poor people, it's mostly young families with kids who inhabitate the peripheric areas around the GRA. After all, gentrification has hit Pigneto hard (and it's now a hipster paradise), but not many other areas of Rome.

[SPQR]

Thank you, very interesting! Seems like a difficult environment for the PD, if it is becoming weaker both in the growing periphery and in the former left-wing strongholds in the semi-center.

Indeed, it's an extremely difficult environment. But in some sense the problems that PD has in Rome are more or less the reflection of its problems with certain social categories more broadly.

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For what concerns Rome, there is a great website called MappaRoma which provides maps (and datasets) for both electoral results and sociodemographic variables.
http://mapparoma.blogspot.it/

For other cities, either you can see http://mappeelettorali.it/ or go to the electoral websites of each single municipality and download the more detailed results by precint.

[SPQR]

Huh, I didn't remember AN was so strong in Puglia.
For the rest, typical strength in the Center-South and bad results in the north (except for Trieste, which has its own reasons for being a bit nationalistic...), where Lega Nord swept the field.

[SPQR]

I mean, Tuscany, Liguria, the greater center, and big cities outside of it all make sense to me. Sardinia might have to do with Berlinguer (it'd be kind of fascinating if so). Not sure what's up in Calabria though.

That area in southern Sardinia (Carbonia-Iglesisas) is very poor and reliant on mining.
And in fact now it's one of the strongholds of M5S, who also won their first municipal election ever in southern Sardinia (Assemini, near Cagliari).

Calabria has an history of voting quite oddly. A mix of old communists and lots of clientele votes.

[SPQR]

For some reason (does anyone know?) Forza Italia were not on the ballot there, which explains that...

They were excluded by the checking commission because they collected the signatures needed under the law for presenting their Apulian list of candidates on irregular forms...more specifically, they presented some of those signatures on a National Alliance official form, cancelling NA logo and pen-writing "Forza Italia" in its place.

Bahaha. Classic Forza.

Indeed. Almost the same thing occurred in 2010 for the regional elections in Lazio.
PdL (Forza Italia + Alleanza Nazionale) didn't turn the signature forms in time because they were trying to change the candidates until the last second, so that in the province of Rome they weren't on the ballot.

That didn't stop their candidate, Polverini, from winning, though...