«It won’t have any weight, it’s a consultative referendum». “It will be an excellent indicator because it will tell us what the people want.” The discussion on the call to the polls which today, from 8am to 9pm, will potentially involve 93,646 citizens (54,065 a Cosenza31,513 y It makes and 8,068 y Castrolibero) has also polarized around these two positions: those who consider the referendum to be ineffective, as it is consultative (unlike the repealing and confirmatory ones, it will not have direct consequences on the approval of bill no. 177/XII), those who instead count on being able to stand up to those who proposed the merger of the three municipalities by showing unequivocal vote percentages. Where is the truth? Meanwhile, the referendum, regardless of the type, always represents an exercise in democracy, which never hurts. We will need to understand how this “tool” will be used by the electorate.
The double reading of turnouts
How to read the results of the polls? One of the topics of discussion on the political table that took center stage on the eve of the referendum on the merger concerns the weight attributed to the percentages of each individual municipality, given that they are three different demographic “characters”. There will, therefore, be an overall turnout percentage (quite simply the sum of the three turnouts of Cosenza, Rende and Castrolibero). The other reading that cannot be ignored is the single turnout in each municipality which, not necessarily, will coincide with the general one.
The comparison with the administrative authorities
Furthermore, the importance of the referendum will also be measured by comparing the turnout of individual municipalities at the polls with those of the last administrative elections. Let’s start from Cosenza. In 2021, the year in which Franz Caruso was elected mayor, following a run-off with Francesco Caruso, in the first instance (i.e. right before the run-off) 64.74% voted. The percentage of voters in Castrolibero in 2023 was slightly higher (67.89%), when Orlandino Greco’s return to the seat of mayor was sanctioned. In Rende (a municipality currently under commissionership after the dissolution of the Council), however, Marcello Manna was re-elected in 2019, at the end of a run-off with Sandro Principe, with a turnout of 70.96%. Here, these three basic data – 64.74% in Cosenza, 67.89% in Castrolibero and 70.96% in Rende – will have to be taken into consideration to carry out a complete analysis of the vote.