Abstract

The paper studies the relation between the social class of an individual and his (her) party vote in Italy in four elections: 1972, 1983, 2001 and 2006. The analyses are based on (electoral) survey data, including for 2006 a rolling cross section survey. Independence indices, Kappa indices, cumulative logit models and binomial logit models are used in the analyses. Results show that, theories about the "death of class" notwithstanding, the association between class and vote continues to exist and it matters, though it is not very strong. A slight decline of the association across elections can be detected, as well as some interesting variations in the aggregate vote of certain classes.