Elections in the Province of Brescia: Concurrent Use of Three-Way Data Analysis Techniques

For the study of political evolution along time in Italy, from 1948 until 1994, fiifteen electoral data tables were analyzed concerning the municipalities of the Brescia province in Northern-Italy. The set of tables was submitted to three of three-way data analyses, namely Generalized Canonical Analysis, Multiple Factor Analysis, and Statis whose results have been compared with those of Principal Component Analysis. The results showed a general agreement of the different analyses, with different interstructure results, that depended upon the different approach of every method. It resulted a clear vision of the political space and its substantial stability along time, with some important variation only of the Socialist Party from its alliance with the Communist Party to an authonomous position within the small parties. In this picture, the new parties that appeared in the years 1992-94 occupy the same political position of the old ones and this could explain the Berlusconi’s marketing strategy that led him to win the elections in 1994. Nevertheless, the 1994 results proved to be unpredictable on the basis of the previous pattern.