DOCSLIB.ORG

Partisanship and the Swing-Vote in the 2010S: the Italian Case (Very Preliminary Draft)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Partisanship and the swing-vote in the 2010s: The Italian case (very preliminary draft) Paolo Bellucci University of Siena [email protected] Paper presented to the ECPR General Conference, University of Glasgow, September 3-6 2014; Panel on Partisanship Revisited. Abstract The recent Italian 2013 legislative elections show the largest volatility in the history of the Italian Republic: 39% of voters changed their previous vote. Although many reasons can explain such result (as a consequence of a severe economic crisis and of heightened distrust in established parties), this calls into question the extent and nature of partisanship among Italians. Relying on an Itanes 5 wave panel surveyed between 2011 and 2013, and employing a battery of indicators of partisanship based on the Index of Identification with a Psychological Group, the paper assesses whether contemporary partisanship in Italy is best seen as an attitude or as a form of social identity. 1. Introduction Partisanship - the relationship which links citizens to parties and that pushes voters to repeatedly cast a ballot (in most cases) for the same parties - is a matter of debate in contemporary (established) democracies. The main questions are: 1) whether such a relationship exists at all; 2) the sources and nature of partisan attachments. An extensive literature has dealt with the waning of partisans (parties without partisans, in the apt title of the book edited by Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000) although the verdict is still open on the actual fading of partisan voters (see contra Berglund at al., 2005 and Schmitt, 2009). The erosion of cleavage parties, brought about by socio-economic modernisation which undermined the very social bases of class, religion and territory as sources of political identities, is singled out as the main culprit of the progressive decoupling of parties and voters. Further, rising electoral volatility (Mair, 2013) has been matched by the emergence of new parties increasingly appearing in Western Europe (Bolleyer, 2013), disrupting traditional party system environments and providing voters with novel – although often unstable - political actors. The political supply side has shown then an overall weakening of the parties and a blurring of their images, thus affecting one end in the continuum of party- voters relationship. Which likely impacts of the willingness/capacity of voters to develop stable party allegiances. On the demand side, however, this does not mean that voters are necessarily impervious to developing partisan attachments or attitudes to changing/new parties. Although much evidence supports the notion that party identification in Europe is nothing more than the current voting intention/preference (Thomassen and Rosema, 2009), partisanship can usefully be conceptualised differently, as party evaluations (Rosema, 2004), party attitudes or predispositions (Pappi, 1996). Actually one review argues that two notions of partisanship have evolved in the literature (Bartle and Bellucci, 2009): one based on social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981) and one based on attitudes (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981), that is as a generalised and enduring response to an object, the party. 1 According to the social identity perspective, partisanship is founded on a sense of ‘we-feeling’, the perception of a shared interdependence or common fate. The US Columbia School and the European Rokkan-Lipset tradition both conceptualized the ‘we-feeling’ as based on primary groups belonging, such as class, religion and territory. In particular, European cleavage parties were associated to (better: were able to develop) forms of partisanship based on people’ pre-political allegiances which provided the sources of party support. Also the Michigan School – which introduced the social-psychological approach - conceptualized partisanship as a weak form of social identity (the original definition of party identification as ‘an affective attachment to an important group object in the environment’ [Campbell et al., 1960, 143]), although allegiances were based, rather than primary groups, on secondary groups such as the parties themselves or partisan groups or fellow party voters. The alternative attitudinal perspective to partisanship is based on the notion of a positive or negative disposition towards parties, which may stem from numerous different sources: party performance (Fiorina, 1981), issue preferences (Adams, 2001), ideology (Bellucci et al. 2010), leaders evaluations (Garzia, 2014). Partisanship as an attitude has been primarily associated to research on instrumental political behaviour, based on people’s reasoning and evaluation of party supply and performance. Attitudinal partisanship is, in brief, a political predisposition to support a party open however to updating processes based on experience, a sort of Bayesian prior representing voters summary experiences and information on parties performance (Bartle and Bellucci, 2009, 13). It is enticing to connect social identity partisanship with traditional (cleavage based or just stable) parties while associating attitudinal partisanship to catch-all parties (or just to new parties), so to adjust peoples’ evolving partisan allegiances to the changing reality of parties. Such comparison is however not warranted, since social identity partisanship need not to be associated to social cleavages, as the US case illustrates while, as social psychology research has shown concerning the emergence of in-group favoritism under minimal conditions (that is, in experimental settings people develop social identities with groups designated by other than a common label; Huddy, 2001), even new parties can elicit significant level of partisan identification. Conceptualising partisanship as a social identity could then provide an answer to the declining strength of traditional religion or occupational groups as basis of party support, which would leave unexplained the contemporary origin of partisan allegiances. Huddy and Mason (2010) argue that ‘social identity theory provides a more plausible and purely psychological alternative [to the traditional sociological base of party support] in which partisan identity rests on perceived similarity to typical partisans’ (4). Greene (1999; 2004; 2002; 2005) has pioneered such approach in the US context, relying on standard multi-item scale used to assess social identity, employing ten items - featuring Mael and Tetrick’s (1992) Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale - to gauge partisanship. Greene maintains that social identification with a political party is an important additional element of partisanship, traditionally seen only as social-psychological attachment, supplementing the dimensions of affection and cognition and showed such a scale to differentiate – over and beyond the standard US seven point scale - feelings toward candidates and parties, party support and levels of party involvement. The exercise carried out in this paper is to compare the standard CSES measure of partisanship – employed in most European studies – with the IDPD scale. Both were included in a panel conducted by the Italian National Election Study in 2011-13 with the aim to comparatively assess their measurement properties and their behavioural political consequences. The assumption we move on is that the CSES measure of Closeness To Party is 2 tapping an attitude – based mainly on ideological/issues affinity – so our overall goal is to assess whether partisanship in Italy is best seen as an attitude or as a form of social identity. In order to do so we inquiry first into their reciprocal relationship, assess their capacity to distinguish in-group – out-group partisan objects, analyse then the determinants of Closeness To Party and Party Social Identity, and finally ascertain their explicative contribution to a model of party vote in the 2013 election. 2. Partisanship in the 2011-13 political cycle The current analysis relies on a five-wave panel surveyed across two unanticipated and unambiguous economic and political shocks Italy experienced between 2011 and 20131. In essence: after the landslide victory of Berlusconi’s led People of Freedom (PoF) in 2008 the centre-right government – hit by a worsening economic and financial crisis - experienced a severe political decline. It was ousted from government and replaced in November 2011 by a «technical cabinet» backed in Parliament by a grand coalition of the main parties. The ensuing 2013 elections showed great vote losses for both the right-wing PoF (down to 21.3% from the 37.2% polled in 2008) and for the left-wing Democratic Party (DP) (which obtained 25.5% of the vote, likewise lower than the 2008’s result of 33.1%). Conversely the Five Star Movement (5SM), an anti-political group founded by a comedian-turned-blogger Beppe Grillo, which contested a national election for the first time, became the second largest party in the house (with 25.1% of the votes). Incumbent premier Monti’s new centrist party – Civic Choice – polled just 10.8%. An astonishing number of at least 10 new lists contested the elections nationally, four of which obtained seats at the Lower House. The electoral results showed the greatest vote-swing in the history of the Italian Republic, with an index of aggregate volatility of 39.1%, even above the 36.7% level reached in the first election of the Second Republic in 1994. Although many reasons can explain such result (as a consequence of a severe economic crisis and of distrust in established parties; see Bellucci,
Recommended publications
  • The Transformation of Italian Democracy

    The Transformation of Italian Democracy

    Bulletin of Italian Politics Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009, 29-47 The Transformation of Italian Democracy Sergio Fabbrini University of Trento Abstract: The history of post-Second World War Italy may be divided into two distinct periods corresponding to two different modes of democratic functioning. During the period from 1948 to 1993 (commonly referred to as the First Republic), Italy was a consensual democracy; whereas the system (commonly referred to as the Second Republic) that emerged from the dramatic changes brought about by the end of the Cold War functions according to the logic of competitive democracy. The transformation of Italy’s political system has thus been significant. However, there remain important hurdles on the road to a coherent institutionalisation of the competitive model. The article reconstructs the transformation of Italian democracy, highlighting the socio-economic and institutional barriers that continue to obstruct a competitive outcome. Keywords: Italian politics, Models of democracy, Parliamentary government, Party system, Interest groups, Political change. Introduction As a result of the parliamentary elections of 13-14 April 2008, the Italian party system now ranks amongst the least fragmented in Europe. Only four party groups are represented in the Senate and five in the Chamber of Deputies. In comparison, in Spain there are nine party groups in the Congreso de los Diputados and six in the Senado; in France, four in the Assemblée Nationale an d six in the Sénat; and in Germany, six in the Bundestag. Admittedly, as is the case for the United Kingdom, rather fewer parties matter in those democracies in terms of the formation of governments: generally not more than two or three.
  • 1 Populism in Election Times: a Comparative Analysis Of

    1 Populism in Election Times: a Comparative Analysis Of

    POPULISM IN ELECTION TIMES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ELEVEN COUNTRIES IN WESTERN EUROPE Laurent Bernharda and Hanspeter Kriesib,c aSwiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS), University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; bDepartment of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole (Florence), Italy; cLaboratory for Comparative Social Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation CONTACT: Laurent Bernhard [email protected] ABSTRACT: The article comparatively examines the levels of populism exhibited by parties in Western Europe. It relies on a quantitative content analysis of press releases collected in the context of eleven national elections between 2012 to 2015. In line with the first hypothesis, the results show that parties from both the radical right and the radical left make use of populist appeals more frequently than mainstream parties. With regard to populism on cultural issues, the article establishes that the radical right outclasses the remaining parties, thereby supporting the second hypothesis. On economic issues, both types of radical parties are shown to be particularly populist. This pattern counters the third hypothesis, which suggests that economic populism is most prevalent among the radical left. Finally, there is no evidence for the fourth hypothesis, given that parties from the South do not resort to more populism on economic issues than those from the North. KEYWORDS: Introduction In the first decades immediately following World War II, populism was a rather marginal phenomenon in Western Europe (Gellner and Ionescu 1969). In contrast to many other regions, conventional wisdom had long maintained that populism would have a hard time establishing itself in this part of the world (Priester 2012: 11).
  • The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe by Kimberly Ann Twist a Dissertation Submitted In

    The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe by Kimberly Ann Twist a Dissertation Submitted In

    The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe by Kimberly Ann Twist A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jonah D. Levy, Chair Professor Jason Wittenberg Professor Jacob Citrin Professor Katerina Linos Spring 2015 The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe Copyright 2015 by Kimberly Ann Twist Abstract The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe by Kimberly Ann Twist Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Jonah D. Levy, Chair As long as far-right parties { known chiefly for their vehement opposition to immigration { have competed in contemporary Western Europe, scholars and observers have been concerned about these parties' implications for liberal democracy. Many originally believed that far- right parties would fade away due to a lack of voter support and their isolation by mainstream parties. Since 1994, however, far-right parties have been included in 17 governing coalitions across Western Europe. What explains the switch from exclusion to inclusion in Europe, and what drives mainstream-right parties' decisions to include or exclude the far right from coalitions today? My argument is centered on the cost of far-right exclusion, in terms of both office and policy goals for the mainstream right. I argue, first, that the major mainstream parties of Western Europe initially maintained the exclusion of the far right because it was relatively costless: They could govern and achieve policy goals without the far right.
  • English Version of This Report Is the Only Official Document

    English Version of This Report Is the Only Official Document

    Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS 4 March 2018 ODIHR Election Assessment Mission Final Report Warsaw 6 June 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................... 1 II. INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................... 3 III. BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................... 3 IV. LEGAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................. 4 V. ELECTORAL SYSTEM .............................................................................................................. 5 VI. ELECTION ADMINISTRATION .............................................................................................. 6 VII. VOTER REGISTRATION .......................................................................................................... 8 VIII. CANDIDATE REGISTRATION ................................................................................................ 9 IX. ELECTION CAMPAIGN .......................................................................................................... 11 X. CAMPAIGN FINANCE............................................................................................................. 12 XI. MEDIA .......................................................................................................................................
  • Challenger Party List

    Challenger Party List

    Appendix List of Challenger Parties Operationalization of Challenger Parties A party is considered a challenger party if in any given year it has not been a member of a central government after 1930. A party is considered a dominant party if in any given year it has been part of a central government after 1930. Only parties with ministers in cabinet are considered to be members of a central government. A party ceases to be a challenger party once it enters central government (in the election immediately preceding entry into office, it is classified as a challenger party). Participation in a national war/crisis cabinets and national unity governments (e.g., Communists in France’s provisional government) does not in itself qualify a party as a dominant party. A dominant party will continue to be considered a dominant party after merging with a challenger party, but a party will be considered a challenger party if it splits from a dominant party. Using this definition, the following parties were challenger parties in Western Europe in the period under investigation (1950–2017). The parties that became dominant parties during the period are indicated with an asterisk. Last election in dataset Country Party Party name (as abbreviation challenger party) Austria ALÖ Alternative List Austria 1983 DU The Independents—Lugner’s List 1999 FPÖ Freedom Party of Austria 1983 * Fritz The Citizens’ Forum Austria 2008 Grüne The Greens—The Green Alternative 2017 LiF Liberal Forum 2008 Martin Hans-Peter Martin’s List 2006 Nein No—Citizens’ Initiative against
  • Network Pa Erns of Legislative Collaboration In

    Network Pa Erns of Legislative Collaboration In

    Network Paerns of Legislative Collaboration in Twenty Parliaments Franc¸ois Briae [email protected] Supplementary online material is appendix contains detailed information on the data and networks briey documented in the short note “Network Paerns of Legislative Collaboration in Twenty Parliaments”. Section A starts by reviewing the existing literature on legislative cosponsorship as a strategic position-taking device for legis- lators within parliamentary chambers. Section B then documents the data collection process, Section C summarises its results, and Section D contains the full list of party abbreviations used in the data. Section E fully documents how the cosponsorship networks were constructed and weighted, and lists some derived measures. e replication material for this study is available at https://github.com/ briatte/parlnet. e code was wrien in R (R Core Team, 2015), and the cur- rent release of the repository is version 2.6. See the README le of the reposi- tory for detailed replication instructions including package dependencies. e raw data up to January 2016 are available at doi:10.5281/zenodo.44440. CONTENTS A Background information on legislative cosponsorship . 2 B Sample denition and data collection . 4 B.1 Bills . 4 B.2 Sponsors . 10 C Descriptive statistics by country, chamber and legislature . 11 D Party abbreviations and Le/Right scores . 17 E Cosponsorship network construction . 27 E.1 Edge weights . 28 E.2 Network objects . 30 E.3 Network descriptors . 31 References . 35 1 A. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON LEGISLATIVE COSPONSORSHIP Legislative scholarship oers a wealth of studies that stress the importance of collabo- ration between Members of Parliament (MPs) in the lawmaking process.
  • The London School of Economics and Political Science Flirting with Disaster –

    The London School of Economics and Political Science Flirting with Disaster –

    The London School of Economics and Political Science Flirting with Disaster – Explaining Excessive Public Debt Accumulation in Italy and Belgium Zsófia Barta A thesis submitted to the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, September 2011. Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of the author. I warrant that this authorization does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. 2 Abstract The sovereign debt-crises that recently unfolded in Europe highlight how incompletely we understand why prosperous developed countries persistently accumulate debt even in the face of risk of fiscal turmoil. Scholarly research explored why countries run deficits, but it remains unexplained why countries fail to put their fiscal houses in order once public debt reaches potentially dangerous proportions. This thesis argues that the key to the problem of excessive debt accumulation is the lack of compromise among powerful socio-economic groups within the polity about the distribution of the necessary fiscal sacrifices.
  • New Populisms and the European Right and Far Right Parties. the Challenge and the Perspectives for the Left

    New Populisms and the European Right and Far Right Parties. the Challenge and the Perspectives for the Left

    NEW POPULISMS AND THE EUROPEAN RIGHT AND FAR RIGHT PARTIES. THE CHALLENGE AND THE PERSPECTIVES FOR THE LEFT NUOVI POPULISMI E LE DESTRE ESTREME IN EUROPA LE SFIDE E LE PROSPETTIVE PER LA SINISTRA 1 EDIZIONI PUNTO ROSSO Via G. Pepe 14 – 20159 Milano Telefoni e fax 02/87234046 [email protected]; www.puntorosso.it Redazione delle Edizioni Punto Rosso: Nunzia Augeri, Alessandra Balena, Eleonora Bonaccorsi, Laura Cantelmo, Loris Caruso, Serena Daniele, Dilva Giannelli, Roberto Mapelli, Stefano Nutini, Giorgio Riolo, Roberta Riolo, Nelly Rios Rios, Erica Rodari, Pietro Senigaglia, Domenico Scoglio, Franca Venesia. 2 Presentation Giorgio Riolo Introduction. Peril from the Right Walter Baier Why Populism? Ernesto Laclau The Populism of Precarity Andrea Fumagalli The extreme right and right-wing populism in Germany Gerd Wiegel (Translation: Susann Kamme-Davies) Italy: The Northern League and Berlusconi’s Populism Roberto Biorcio Nach Rechts! Demystifying the Rise of Populist and the Far-Right in Post-Transition Hungary Adam Fabry The Panorama of the European Extreme Right: Populisms and Extreme Rights, East and West Saverio Ferrari Right-wing political models for the future of Europe: What is the Political Right up to in the European Parliament? Thilo Janssen Confronting the Extreme Right: A Challenge for the Left Lessons Learned From the 2012 Elections in France Elisabeth Gauthier Beyond the Extreme Right: the European Populist Challenge Yannis Stavrakakis Why Ever Should the Working Class Vote for the Left? Mimmo Porcaro Conclusions Luciana Castellina Nicola Nicolosi Annex Karlsruhe’s Shortsightedness Luciana Castellina From “Il Manifesto”, 13 September 2012 3 WORKSHOP New populisms are haunting Europe. These populisms are shaping the European political Rights.
  • Alter Or Anti? How the Media See the Opposition in Italy1

    Alter Or Anti? How the Media See the Opposition in Italy1

    Bulletin of Italian Politics Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012, 151-163 Alter or Anti? How the Media See the 1 Opposition in Italy Elisabetta De Giorgi University of Siena Abstract: Expert surveys have recently acquired growing popularity as a method for detecting the policy preferences of political parties as well as for obtaining information about a range of other aspects of political systems. In this case, a survey was administered to Italian journalists, accredited by the Chamber of Deputies, through the use of Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI). Fifty-five journalists, representing thirty-seven different newspapers, radio and TV broadcasters and news agencies, were interviewed, between March and April 2011. They were asked to answer a series of questions regarding the role and functions of the opposition in the Italian Parliament, its relationship with the Government and the existence of a possible Berlusconi effect on its behaviour. This article reports in detail the results of this expert survey, in order to understand how the media consider the Italian parliamentary opposition and to shed new light on this fundamental political actor. Keywords: Expert survey, Parliamentary opposition, Government, Berlusconi’s effect Although in the weeks before its demise the government led by Silvio Berlusconi was facing an unprecedented loss of support, due to a combination of economic and political factors together with the scandals involving the Prime Minister himself, the Italian parliamentary opposition did not seem to be enjoying higher opinion-poll ratings. In 2011, in the local elections held in May and then in four referenda held about one month later, the centre-right coalition consisting of the People of Freedom (PdL) and its ally, the Northern League, suffered serious defeats: the first time this had happened since 2008.
  • The State of Right-Wing Extremism in Europe

    The State of Right-Wing Extremism in Europe

    Policy Area: Focus on Right-Wing Extremism European Union Center of North Carolina EU Briefings, March 2012 The State of Right-Wing Extremism in Europe Since the 1980s, a family of political parties, often labeled “Extreme Right” or “Far Right”, has made significant inroads in Western Europe. Common to nearly all of these parties is a strong opposition to immigration (particularly non-European immigration), a willingness to exploit cultural tensions between Muslims and others, and a populist discourse pitting “the people”, who they claim to represent, against political elites. There are also significant differences. Some, like the Norwegian Progress Party, started out as anti-tax movements and promoted market liberal economics; others, like the French Front National, tend to adopt an anti-neoliberal stance. Some, such as the Austrian Freedom Party, have neo-Nazi or anti-Semitic histories; others, like the PVV in the Netherlands, are ostensibly motivated by a desire to protect “Enlightenment values”. But regardless of these distinctions, most of these so-called Extreme Right Parties (ERPs) have grown remarkably over the past three decades. Outside these party politics, a number of Extreme Right street movements have also flourished in the past decade. In the UK, France, and Italy these movements have been associated with civil disruption and violence. In addition, a small number of Extreme Right activists have recently carried out politically motivated atrocities. This brief focuses mainly on Western Europe, since ERPs in Central and Eastern Europe are significantly different in nature and operate in party systems that prevent straightforward comparisons across East and West – and, for the most part, appear to pose a lesser threat.
  • Codebook: Government Composition, 1960-2019

    Codebook: Government Composition, 1960-2019

    Codebook: Government Composition, 1960-2019 Codebook: SUPPLEMENT TO THE COMPARATIVE POLITICAL DATA SET – GOVERNMENT COMPOSITION 1960-2019 Klaus Armingeon, Sarah Engler and Lucas Leemann The Supplement to the Comparative Political Data Set provides detailed information on party composition, reshuffles, duration, reason for termination and on the type of government for 36 democratic OECD and/or EU-member countries. The data begins in 1959 for the 23 countries formerly included in the CPDS I, respectively, in 1966 for Malta, in 1976 for Cyprus, in 1990 for Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, in 1991 for Poland, in 1992 for Estonia and Lithuania, in 1993 for Latvia and Slovenia and in 2000 for Croatia. In order to obtain information on both the change of ideological composition and the following gap between the new an old cabinet, the supplement contains alternative data for the year 1959. The government variables in the main Comparative Political Data Set are based upon the data presented in this supplement. When using data from this data set, please quote both the data set and, where appropriate, the original source. Please quote this data set as: Klaus Armingeon, Sarah Engler and Lucas Leemann. 2021. Supplement to the Comparative Political Data Set – Government Composition 1960-2019. Zurich: Institute of Political Science, University of Zurich. These (former) assistants have made major contributions to the dataset, without which CPDS would not exist. In chronological and descending order: Angela Odermatt, Virginia Wenger, Fiona Wiedemeier, Christian Isler, Laura Knöpfel, Sarah Engler, David Weisstanner, Panajotis Potolidis, Marlène Gerber, Philipp Leimgruber, Michelle Beyeler, and Sarah Menegal.
  • Associazione Itanes

    Associazione Itanes

    Associazione Itanes Italian National Election Studies Itanes 2013 Italian National Election Survey 2013 CAPI Post-Electoral Survey QUESTIONNAIRE Translation: 07/08/2014 Original questionnaire: ITA2013_Questionario(CAPI)_Italiano.pdf Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Section 1: Economy ............................................................................................................................. 2 Section 2: Most Important Problems ................................................................................................... 4 Section 3: Trust .................................................................................................................................... 4 Section 5: Opinions on Democracy and Parties ................................................................................... 6 Section 6: Europe ................................................................................................................................. 7 Section 7: Interest in Politics ............................................................................................................... 7 Section 8: Issues ................................................................................................................................... 8 Section 9: Religion ..............................................................................................................................