Forecasting the Italian Elections: Winners and Losers of the Refugee Crisis

As mentioned in our first post, immigration has certainly been one of the most salient issues in the Italian political debate of recent years. This is why, in our baseline prediction model for the legislative election of March 4th, we have included the relative, within-term change of the number of foreign-born residents in each Italian municipality.  However, this might not be enough to capture how voters will respond to this issue. In fact, such parameter only measures the variation in the number of legal immigrants, having a regular permit to reside on the Italian territory. On the other hand, the aspect that has dominated the electoral campaign is rather the substantial inflow of undocumented immigrants or refugees, and its impact on native people. 

To get a sense of this phenomenon, we exploit municipal-level data about SPRAR (Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati). SPRAR is a nationwide system, managed by the Ministry of the Interior, that provides accommodation and basic services to immigrants reaching Italy as refugees from at-risk countries. In a nutshell, it is based on the initiatives of local administrations, that get funds from the central government to finance the reception and care of asylum seekers. In particular, we have data about the number of SPRAR projects active in each municipality as of 2013 and January 2017. Moreover, for each active project, we know how many refugees it hosts at the time of observation. This allows us to track the development of SPRAR throughout the term, and use it as an additional predictor in our forecast. The inclusion of this information in the analysis induces the changes in votes, shares, and seats displayed in the table that opens this article. 

As one can easily spot, according to our estimates, the substantial increase in the number and size of SPRAR projects in the period under analysis is going to benefit those parties that have put the greatest emphasis on the migration issue during their campaigns. In particular, Matteo Salvini's Northern League and Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy are set to earn a joint bonus of more than 150000 votes. However, it is interesting to note how a sizable portion of such bonus may consist of votes that would have otherwise accrued to the leading party in the coalition, Berlusconi's Forward Italy. As a result, the net gain for the center-right is pretty modest, and it is bound to be below one percentage point of the national vote. As to the other parties, a severe penalty is imposed by the electorate on the Five-Star Movement, whose position on this crucial issue has been thus far unclear, and that in 2013, the election we use to estimate the parameters of the model used for the forecast, did not emphasize the issue much. The table shows how such lack of clarity may persuade many of its supporters to either choose another party or to abstain. (We are at the same time aware that, being based on historical records rather than recent campaign position-taking, our model might miss any correction the Five-Star might have made to this disadvantage by acting tougher on immigration.) An increase of the abstention rate is in fact another important side effect of including the migration crisis into our framework. Namely, it may convince more than half a million additional citizens not to cast any ballot on March 4th. 

Mean of vote shares and seats allocated across 1000 elections simulated by our prediction model. Note that, as in our update of February 22nd, we are now summing up Democratic Party, +Europa, Civica Popolare and Insieme into the center-left coalition. For the latter three parties, whose performances cannot be estimated with our framework, we rely on YouTrend' s latest "super-mean" of polls, published on February 16th.

While the overall shift in terms of vote shares across parties is not dramatic, key insights come from the analysis about how the allocation of seats may change. In particular, even with a fairly limited increase in its vote share, the center-right would earn as many as 13 additional seats according to our exercise. Why is this the case? The core reason is that Berlusconi's coalition would gain from  the Five-Star Movement several single-member districts in close races in Southern Italy. This area of Italy, indeed, is at the same time the one with the toughest competition between the two camps and the one that has been most seriously hit by the inflow of refugees and undocumented migrants. 

With this additional bonus, the center-right would approach the threshold of 316 MPs needed to control the Chamber of Deputies. As discussed, this important step forward would entirely be the result of the better performance of the Northern League and Brothers of Italy. Ironically enough, however, the major beneficiary will probably be Berlusconi's Forward Italy, a perfect free rider in this situation. The reason is simple: most of the candidates in single-member districts of the center-right in Southern Italy are Forward Italy's members. As such, a shift of power towards the right part of the coalition in terms of consensus might instead result in a de facto shift in the opposite direction in terms of seats. 

About authors

Massimo Pulejo is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Bocconi University, Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management.
Piero Stanig is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bocconi University, Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management, and a fellow of the Carlo F. Dondena Research Center. 

Thanks to Giovanni Da Fre' for excellent research assistance.