Federico is one of many young Italians eligible to go to the polls for the first time on Sunday to vote in national elections.

Like many of his cohort, he is unimpressed by politics, but far from disengaged.



“Of course, I will go to the voting booth,” said the 21-year-old engineering student at Roma Tre University. “But I will put a big cross through the ballot paper. None of the politicians are honest, all they do is use propaganda.”

Federico, who declined to give his surname, catches an early train each morning in Orte, a town in the central region of Lazio, for a commute that takes about 50 minutes. Accompanying him is Marco, a fellow engineering student who is unsure about whether to vote, but has nonetheless taken note of the candidates and finds them wanting.

Silvio Berlusconi has dominated Italian politics since the early 1990s, and came to power for the second time four years after the two students were born. Now, the 81-year-old billionaire’s coalition of rightwing parties is leading in the polls, as he attempts a comeback after years of scandal.

“Berlusconi, he never goes away,” says Marco.

The two 21-year-olds are equally disenchanted with the youngest candidate in the running: Luigi Di Maio, the 31-year-old leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), which has morphed into Italy’s most popular party over the past nine years – mostly thanks to 25- to 40-year-olds inspired by its pledges to weed out corruption and bring down the old elite.

“Look what’s happening to M5S now,” said Federico. “They said they would give part of their salaries towards helping small businesses, but [in some cases] it’s not true. They presented themselves as being different, but they’re the same as the rest.”

Valentina Prosperini, a 22-year-old shop worker, said she would vote but had not decided which party to back.

Surveys forecast that up to 40% of voters under 25 could abstain.

But Prosperini said: “It’s important to participate. The most important theme for me is jobs. It’s difficult to find work, and when you do find it, you have to try to keep hold of it.”

Analysts say the growing apathy with politics is not confined to the young: overall, about 30% of voters plan to abstain or are undecided.



“This is partly due to a loss of faith in politicians,” said Antonio Noto, the head of the polling firm IPR. “A decade ago, the level of faith in political parties was around 10%, now it’s 7%. People think that voting is useless.”

The high turnover in leadership – Paolo Gentiloni’s government is Italy’s 65th since the second world war – has also fed discontent. But the main concern among voters is financial wellbeing, as the country’s recovery from a lengthy recession gathers pace.

“Italians feel poorer than they did five years ago – they haven’t registered any improvement in their quality of life,” said Noto.

Barbara Fazio, a 53-year-old pet therapist, also intends to spoil her ballot card. In the 2013 elections she backed M5S, which achieved the second-largest share of the votes just four years after it burst on to Italy’s political scene. But now, she no longer believes the party is capable of bringing about the changes promised.

“There is no long-term vision from anyone,” she said. “Italy was at the forefront of innovation after the war, people worked hard and studied. Nowadays they only think about making money, as quickly as possible. As for Berlusconi, he is a similar character to Donald Trump – people think that by voting for him they will be better off.”

Berlusconi’s coalition, which includes two far-right parties, is currently ahead in polls, with M5S in second place and the centre-left Democratic party, led by the former prime minister Matteo Renzi, lagging in third.

The abstention rate in national elections has risen since the early 1990s, partly because of penalties against non-voters being abolished in 1992. The turnout in the 2013 general elections was 75.19%, the lowest since 1946.

“Generations after the second world war were socialised under the idea that voting was a duty,” said Lorenzo De Sio, a political professor at Rome’s LUISS University.

The outcome of the upcoming elections is likely to be determined by the 10 million voters who, so far, remain undecided. In the 2013 elections, support for M5S rose 5% in the last few days of the campaign.

“There are those who will say ‘I don’t want Berlusconi’ and those who will say ‘I don’t want Renzi either as he is as a replica of Berlusconi’ and so might vote for M5S,” said Francesco Galietti, the founder of Policy Sonar, a Rome-based consultancy firm.

“And then are those who will say they’ve all been a disappointment in one way or another, and so won’t vote at all.”