This paper aims to assess the importance of the context in explaining the electoral change and the re-definition of political identity in Italy. Like in other countries (see Campbell 1960, Siegfried 1913) voting traditions in Italy were originally linked to the territory (Agnew 2002). This was mainly due to the social and institutional differences between the North, the Centre and the South of Italy (Putnam 1993). The intergenerational value shifts of the silent revolution (Inglehart 1977) changed this picture deeply. Firstly, voter abstention doubled. Secondly, a new typology of voter appeared, that is the "intermittent" one. The intermittent voter decides separately, for each election, which party to vote for, and whether to vote at all, depending on the electoral campaign, whether the election is national or local, who the candidates are, and so on (Legnante and Segatti 2001). What it is now important to understand is what happened in terms of electoral realignment and voters'' political identity, which parties are now gaining or losing support from intermittent voters, and if they are concentrated in specific areas. In order to describe and explain electoral change, this paper estimates the diachronic electoral swing in Italy between the 2006 and 2008 parliamentary elections using data from all the national polling stations (about 60.000 per election). This allows to geographically map the electoral change (in this case with a particular attention to no-vote) at constituency level, revealing the importance of the territory while explaining changes in voters'' political identities in Italy.
