Analysis of the 2013 Italian election from a Western Sicilian perspective

I did not vote. I haven't been following the campaign very closely, and as a secessionist who lives abroad, I think it would have been immoral for me to vote for any of these blocs.

In regards to the Camera (Chamber - lower house), the center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party received over 10m votes in Italy, which amounts to around 30% of the entire vote. In Western Sicily, where my family live, they received less than 250,000 votes, or slightly over 21%. This percentage is the lowest of all areas in the Republic of Italy for them.

Moreover, the anti-government, anti-corruption, anti-establishment party the Five Star Movement received over 400,000 votes in Western Sicily, or nearly 35%. This was their best result in all of the Republic of Italy, and Sicily is being referred to as their base/headquarters/stronghold, as they received around 25% of the votes in the Republic of Italy, with much of that coming from their strong showing in Sicily. It was their strong showing in Sicily last year that cost the center-right the regional election and threw a gay communist into the Presidency, which is something unheard of in the mostly traditional, strongly-Catholic region, which had never before elected a left-wing President.

The far-left anti-government party Civil Revolution also produced their best result (nearly 4%) in Western Sicily, as opposed to just over 2% in the Republic of Italy, and the government coalition of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti received only 8.4% in Western Sicily, which was their lowest in all of Italy, and indeed much, much lower than in the diaspora. Of absentee ballots from North America, Monti's bloc received 27.5% of all votes. Clearly, Italians working in North America and Italian-Americans who voted did not share the views of the people of Sicily.

Of all of the significant coalitions and parties who stood for election in the Chamber of Deputies, only one, Berlusconi's center-right bloc, did not get either their best or worst showing in Western Sicily. Their vote percentage in the area was average to that which they received in the entire Republic.

In conclusion, I think that these results (other than the center-right's vote tally) reflect the fact that the pressing interests of Sicilian voters in and around Palermo are not the same as the interests of Italian voters from Rome, Florence, Naples, or Milan.

That doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with these sentiments. I happen to love the platform of the libertarian Fare per Fermare il Declino (Act to Stop the Decline) party, who also had their lowest results in Western Sicily, as opposed to Northern Italy where they are at their strongest.