Italian Leader Sees Support Slide

ROME—Support for Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and his parliamentary majority are slipping, a new poll showed Friday, highlighting growing public disappointment at collapsing growth in the euro zone's third-largest economy and indecision in Europe about how to tackle the financial crisis.

Only 50.5% of Italians back the parties that form Mr. Monti's parliamentary majority, according to a poll by Italian polling agency SWG for a television show. That is down from 63.4% two months ago, according to SWG, and two percentage points lower this week. The surveys have a margin of error of three percentage points.

Mr. Monti's bipartisan majority includes all of Italy's main political parties, meaning that almost half of the nation's citizens are looking elsewhere, notably to small left-leaning movements, the SWG poll data showed.

Some 34% of those surveyed said they were confident in the prime minister, down from 71% when Mr. Monti took the helm of an emergency government last November.

Mr. Monti has pushed through tax increases and austerity programs in a bid to stem the rise in Italian sovereign borrowing costs. That worked in his first months in power, but no longer. Italian sovereign-bond yields rose again Friday, led by a sharp jump in the two-year bond to 3.87% from 3.68% on Thursday.

Italy's economy is contracting more than the government anticipated, with the jobless rate rising to a record 10.2% in April. That month, industrial production fell 1.9%, four times more than expected, official data showed Friday.

Mr. Monti on Thursday acknowledged he no longer had the support of the nation's largest newspapers, which are owned by the nation's main business lobby and its powerful corporate interests. That comment came after the economic spokesman of the center-left Democratic Party a few days ago claimed that the government had lost momentum and that the country should vote in national elections this autumn.

Pierluigi Bersani, the Democratic Party's leader, on Friday struck a more conciliatory note, saying he hoped Mr. Monti's government would last until the legislature ends in the spring of 2013.

Write to Christopher Emsden at chris.emsden@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared June 9, 2012, on page A9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Italian Premier Sees Slide In Support.

Mario Monti, SWG online, parliamentary majority

Online.wsj.com