It was, if memory serves, the early 1980s. In the headquarters of the Republican Party (PRI) on Piazza Sant’Eustachio, down back of the Roman Pantheon, the faithful and their guests were celebrating. Spadolini was there, wreathed in smiles, and Visentini. Spumante was opened and panini brought in from the bar across the piazza. Hugs and handshakes all around.

The Republicans were celebrating an electoral gain of .2 percent. Not two percent — two-tenths of one percent. It was probably too small a gain to add any parliamentary seats; it might gain them a slightly better ministerial portfolio if they joined the next government. (Of the pentapartito, the five parties in the “governing area”, the Republicans were usually the most difficult, the last to agree to join a new coalition.) The portfolio would be granted because their miniscule gain constituted, in those days, what passed for “momentum.”
This celebration of such a miniscule gain, a celebration whose counterpart could not be found in other Western countries, was the product of the correspondingly miniscule number of “floating voters” in Italy. Floating voters are those who have not, at the beginning of an electoral campaign, already firmly made up their minds. They are the voters whose votes are genuinely available to the blandishments of the campaign. They make actual decisions. From the late 1940s to some time around 1990, the number of floating voters in Italy was so small that bad weather in the Red Belt, or the canceling of one train bringing workers from the north to the south to vote (as required by law) could sway an election.
The American experience of political parties is entirely different. American parties are mere skeletons that take on serious flesh only close to elections. The parties contribute little money and few workers to the campaigns of candidates. The candidates, these days, are usually not chosen by the party officials; they have won a primary. Consequently, the politician owes little to the party, and the party can expect little in the way of loyalty or discipline in the House, Senate, or state legislature.
The party in postwar Italy was so different from this that the two beasts should not have the same name.
The party touched almost all parts of the member’s life. It was one of his/her vital statistics, like birthplace or eye color. It was the guide (explicit or implicit) to what one read, watched, and how holidays were spent. An Italian Communist read (or at least carried around) the party daily (L’Unitá). But if a Roman or Neapolitan wanted to see what was playing at the movies or read a sports page, then he would also buy the party’s very successful popular local afternoon tabloid, Paese Sera. No Communist family I ever met would admit to having failed to attend the Festa Dell’Unitá in its town. And the votes from that family were assured. It was not an election-by-election decision; it was part of the definition of oneself.
If, then, most of the voters were not truly “available” to trawling politicos, what was the real meaning of an electoral campaign? We’ll examine that strange dance next week.