The prospects for the left in the upcoming Italian general election do not look good, divided as it is between the mainstream Democratic party (PD) and a variety of radical left groupings, many of which have come under the umbrella of Liberi e Uguali (Free and Equal), headed by senate president Pietro Grasso. The last opinion poll put the PD on 22.7% and Free and Equal on 5.4%. The electoral system, which distributes over a third of the seats according to first-past-the-post, will almost certainly ensure that the left pays dearly for its divisions.

From one point of view, the unpopularity of the PD – which has been the mainstay of the governing coalition and which reached a high of 41% in the 2014 European election – is puzzling. The Italian economy is picking up. The government has received praise from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and in other quarters for a series of structural reforms deemed essential to raising productivity and investment. The prime minister, the PD’s Paolo Gentiloni, is the most popular of the major parties’ spokespersons.

The left is struggling in Italy for the same reasons that it is struggling in the rest of Europe

There are two answers to this puzzle. The first is that although the PD has been campaigning hard on its record, the man who personifies this – Gentiloni – is unable to translate approval ratings into support for his party because he is not its leader, and voters know that none of the competing parties or electoral coalitions are likely to emerge with an overall majority on Sunday.

Italian elections are no longer contests between two prime ministerial candidates competing for majorities as they were when Silvio Berlusconi was at the height of his power. Thanks to the emergence of the Five Star Movement as a significant “third force”, the composition and the head of the incoming government will be decided by negotiations after the election. Consequently, a vote for the PD is not necessarily a vote for a Gentiloni premiership, and the party’s actual leader, Matteo Renzi, is unpopular.

Such short-term considerations aside, the left is struggling in Italy for the same reasons that it is struggling in the rest of Europe. Since the collapse of the Berlin wall, unbridled capitalism has been the only game in town; and concomitantly, parties of the left have lost the last vestiges of their former cultural ascendency. In the UK, Labour and the postwar social democratic consensus gave way to New Labour and “the third way”. In Italy, the mighty Communist party and working people’s clubs made way for a succession of non-communist parties and for Berlusconi’s Canale 5.

Consequently, the left is not strong enough to provide representation for a working class that no longer identifies itself as such, feels threatened by mass migration, and perceives a growing gap between itself and the elites. Those elites are no longer just politicians, bankers and wealthy industrialists, but the well-educated in salaried employment – those who, by virtue of their education, are protected from the insecurities of globalisation, are comfortable with its associated cultural changes, and who, like the owners of capital, enjoy positions of privilege.

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The consequence has been division between a “respectable” left and an anti-establishment radical left. While the former has sought, through the formation of the PD in 2007, a governing role in alliance with left-leaning former Christian Democrats, it has struggled to appeal to working-class voters over and against the claims of the anti-immigrant populists. The radical left, while appealing to the better educated in salaried occupations, struggles to make headway against the equally anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

For so long a beacon for the left elsewhere in Europe, the Italian left is struggling to present anything resembling a popular response to the social and economic crises of the early 21st century.

• James Newell is a professor of politics at Salford University and author of The Politics of Italy: Governance in a Normal Country