BOLZANO. Provincial government rejected and government parties essentially stable. One year after the October 2023 elections. This is according to the latest survey by Apollis, the political barometer published by the economic weekly Südtiroler Wirtschaftszeitung, conducted between the months of August and September 2024 on a sample of 1,006 interviewees. A survey which also shows the trend of the parties – in this case, with respect to voting intentions if the polls were to go to the polls “next Sunday” – with a strong fluctuation of the opposition ones, with the Stf and the Greens growing and Jwa (the Jürgen Wirth Anderlan) which halves the consensus.
The approval of the council
According to the survey, 52% of the sample say they are little or not at all satisfied with the council’s work, while 44% say they are very or quite satisfied. The data are in line with those collected a year ago, but in the summer of 2021 the old provincial executive achieved an overall 64% of approval, compared to 33% of interviewees who were little or not at all satisfied. The highest degree of satisfaction is recorded in the Ladin linguistic group (71%), less so among Italians (56%) and Germans (38%). The same fluctuation is observed for president Arno Kompatscher, who from the 2021 results (70% very or fairly satisfied, 27% not very or not at all) drops to 56% positive opinions (42% are negative). The sum is not always 100 for the simple fact that some do not respond. However, within the SVP electorate included in the sample, the president appears to enjoy grassroots support. Hermann Atz, scientific director of Apollis, sees in these results the electorate’s failure to perceive the new impetus that would have been expected from such an important change in the council, where eight out of eleven councilors and councilors are new. The outcome of the investigation into Kompatscher, he says, would be due to the fact that the governor in his third term was not perceived as a leader in the formation of the majority (the alliance with FdI created more than one perplexity) and that it was presented “almost like a victim of circumstances”.
The parties one year after the vote
One year after the last provincial elections, to the question “which party would you choose if you voted on Sunday?” the SVP lost 0.5 points and obtained 34% of the votes. We are far from the 41.9 of the 2018 provincial elections and the 43% of the 2021 survey. Remaining with the majority parties, the Freiheitlichen stand at 4% (4.9 at the 2023 provincial elections, 6.2 in 2018), Fratelli d Italy on 6% (unchanged; in 2018 it was 1.7%), the League still loses one point and in the Apollis survey it only gets 2% (in 2018, in the midst of Salvini’s wave, it gained 11.1% ), the Civica marks a +0.4 and reaches 3%.
Among the opposition parties, the STF reaches 14%, a record for the party, which obtained 10.9% of the votes in the last provincial elections after 6% five years ago. The Greens are also growing (12% in the survey, three points above the result of the provincial elections, 6.8% in 2018). TeamK went from one election to the next from 15.2% in 2018 to 11.1% last year; gets 11% in the new poll. Slow decline for the Democratic Party with 3%, 0.5 points below the result of the 2023 provincial elections (3.8% in 2018). Among the “anti-system” lists, Vita wins (4% in the survey, 2.6% in the provincial elections) while Jwa halves its preferences and drops from 5.9% last year to 3%. Finally, Für Südtirol mit Widmann of former SVP councilor Thomas Widmann drops from 3.4 to 2%. The Apollis survey places the sum of potential votes for M5S (0.7% at the previous provincial elections), Forza Italia (0.6 at the provincial elections) and Center Right (0.6 at the provincial elections) under 2%.
As regards the gender of electors and voters, there is a greater presence of voters in the STF basin and of electors in that of the Greens. Svp and TeamK receive votes from both genders without such a clear prevalence. SM