Voting or non-voting? Electoral participation and socio-economic influence in the Italian Lazio Region

Several theories, sometimes opposite ones, have contributed to enrich the analysis and investigate the root causes of people’s disaffection towards participating in elections. Literature identifies many possible variables affecting the vote: institutional, economic, social and cultural factors, such as inertia or mistrust, as well as physical and administrative obstacles. The paper focuses on socio- economic factors and inspects the relationship between non-voting and some socio-economic indicators in Lazio Region. Here the phenomenon of non-voting has shown a constant increase since the end of the seventies. A first diachronic analysis has been conducted at an aggregate regional level, but the limited number of available regional observations led to no significant results. Consequently, in order to establish the link between voters’ participation and 99 socio-economic indicators from Istat 2011 census, a second synchronic analysis has been carried out at a disaggregated level in the 378 municipalities of Lazio.