I return from my Easter break with a bevy of new polls, many of which highly contested, but all of which hardly change the headline figure: the gap remains roughly the same, at 7.5%.
Nevertheless, interesting stuff is still going on. The nature of the competition continues to squeeze the smaller parties in this bipolar quadrille, with the UDC, on these projections, failing to win any seats in the Senate.
If the UDC fails to win seats in the Senate, the PdL scoops up a couple of extra seats, pushing it over the top, and making its majority slightly more secure. My current projection is for the PdL to win 164 seats, giving it a majority of six senators (magic number: 158).
This is not, however, what today’s prediction from IPR suggests. They outline four possible scenarios: three of the four result in pareggio in the senate, with no clear majority. Why the divergence?
As far as I can see, given the limited information on methodology (national polls “corrected” with unidentified polls in the regions in play), IPR is predicting pareggio in three of these scenarios because they are all scenarios in which the PdL loses Lazio. Given the regions in play, and given the way the regional premia work, the election will be won or lost in Lazio.
This makes things difficult to predict. Lazio is not electorally homogeneous: Rome votes differently from the surroundings. Additionally, the strong presence of the Destra complicates factors. The party is unlikely to win seats in Lazio, but it may draw votes away from the right, depriving them of the majority.
Any predictions are therefore based on assumptions about one key region and one party which has never fought an election before. Those are pretty risky assumptions.
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