ABSTRACT
This article seeks to unravel this complex situation and explain the vote choices of Italians in the 2013 election. To do so it is organized as follows: first, it establishes the principal arguments and develops accompanying hypotheses that account for the impact of blame attribution on voters’ political choices; it then provides some context to describe the unfolding of events that “forced” the Berlusconi cabinet to resign. Here we connect public opinion with domestic political elites’ behaviour and show how popular perceptions of the economic and political situation evolved in 2011-2012 using data from the ITANES five-wave inter-electoral panel study;2
finally, we analyse the determinants of party support in the 2013 election, focusing on blame attribution for the economic crisis, and discussing the impact of the economic and financial crises on the political attitudes of Italian public opinion and on their vote choice.
