ABSTRACT
As Italian electoral history grows longer, it becomes increasingly possible to characterize the various episodes and place them in different clusters. In Italy, the 1948 and 1976 elections were certainly marked by a high degree of discontinuity as Christian Democrats and Communists scored major victories. Some distinguishing elements of the 1992 verdict, compared to previous elections, are immediately apparent. In 1992, the Partito democratico della sinistra (PDS) and Rifondazione comunista together polled only 21.7 percent of the vote; only one voter out of six supported the PDS. Inspection of the returns leaves no doubts as to the fact that 1992 was a year marked by a high degree of discontinuity with respect to the past. In order to map the flows of votes due to changes in voting choices, different pieces of information may be useful. During the 1980s, students of Italian politics noted various signals of impending change in the structure of the nation's electoral market.
