The methodology that I - and everyone else - has been using is uniform national swing (UNS) - the idea that, across the country, the same percentage of people will shift from one coalition to the other compared to last time round. Now, uniform national swing no longer works even in its homeland, the UK. What indication do we have that it will work in Italy?
Well, we’ve got a number of regional polls that are beginning to come out. Two good ones from Sicily and Umbria came out recently from Demopolis and SWG respectively. Let’s compare the results from those polls, with the results projected according to UNS:
| Party | Sicily: poll | Sicily: projection | Umbria: poll | Umbria: projection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PdL+Lega/MpA | 50% | 47.4% | 34.05% | 38.05% |
| Pd+IdV | 31% | 31.2% | 45% | 44.19% |
| Sin. Arcobaleno | 6.5% | 4.9% | 7 | 8.95% |
| UDC | 9% | 7.64% | 5.25% | 6% |
As my old flute teacher used to say: close enough for jazz. A couple of comments:
- The centre-right is running ahead in Sicily because of the astonishing poll performance of Raffaele Lombardo’s MPA, which gets 11% in the Demopolis poll;
- The Partito Democratico seems to be consistent in both regions
- The Sinistra Arcobaleno seems to be more consistent that one might have thought - perhaps it has a more consistent appeal than its constituent parts?
- Pure speculation, but it seems like making Toto Cuffaro capolista doesn’t seem to have hurt the UDC in Sicily - and since Sicily is one of the few places where it’s going to surpass the 8% threshold for the Senate, that statement is very almost equivalent to, “it’s not hurt the UDC at all”.
In other news, Europa criticises Veltroni for dividing his campaign time equally, instead of concentrating on winnable Senate regions, something I noted last week.
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