unification of italy

so, turns out that the unification of italy included plebiscites.

information is scant, but, it seems that at least 10% of the population in every area voted yes. Keep in mind that not every person is even an eligible voter; so this 10% is more than it sounds.

In fact, looking at eligible voters (as a share of the population) in other countries at the time (1860s) and looking at data from the few places in italy that straight up gave turnout figures; it seems 40% of the people were able to vote.

This means only 25% of eligible voters actually votes for unification; even if the overwhelming majority of the remaining 75% stayed home.

Why this is interesting is that while this 25% figure is true for Parma, as well as Naples, Sicily, and the part of the papal states south of San Marino; it is not true for Tuscany, Modena, or the part of the papal states north of San Marino, where the figure was closer to 50%.


The reason I've been looking this up is to see if its reasonable, for alternate history purposes, to simply not unite italy fully. One thing I've found is that there is indeed a drastic political split right down the middle of Italy. The 1919 election map shows it well. It is a split that remains today.

As such I'm declaring this possibility to be reasonable; and am going to start making more posts like this that simply reference some quick work that I've done so that if someone in the future decides this is not reasonable, I can point to something beyond simply saying that I've done my research.