Vincenzo Zoppi leans over the balcony of his cramped Naples apartment and overlooks his impoverished neighborhood, which he says has been betrayed by Italy’s politicians.

“Do you know when they’re coming? If there’s an election,” said the 70-year-old former mechanic, who in 2018 swore his vote for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement – which came to power four years ago on a wave of support from disaffected voters – would be for she his last.

“They all have the same idea: ‘I have to get this position and if I get my place, it’s over.’ You’ll never do anything.”

His view of the former upstart is widely shared in Italy’s third-largest city as the country prepares for the September 25 vote.

Like most of southern Italy, Naples — with its poor public services, high crime and unemployment rate of 24 percent, more than double the national average — overwhelmingly supported the Five Star Movement in the last general election.

Many were attracted by his flagship ‘civil income’ minimum income for poor Italians, as well as his anti-austerity program and rejection of traditional politics.

But the grassroots support that fueled the movement has ebbed, and polls now put Five Star at less than a third of the 33 percent it gained in 2018.

“Those who voted for you because you were the disruptive force to empower the South will no longer vote,” said Matteo Brambilla, 53, a former Naples city councilor who left Five Star last October.

“You are no longer credible.”

Originally identifying as neither left nor right, the loner Five Star Movement advocated a eurosceptic, environmentally conscious and anti-austerity platform focused on fighting poverty and corruption while rejecting career politicians.

But four years later, the government has taken its toll.

“Five stars were an expression of a great protest against the failure of traditional parties,” said Giovanni Orsina, director of the Luiss School of Government in Rome.

“But from the moment you come into government, the protest ends,” he said.

The party has allied itself with its political opponents in office – first with the Anti-Immigrant League, then with the left-leaning Democratic Party, and finally joined almost all of Italy’s parties last year as part of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s grand coalition.

With these shifts have come political U-turns, public rifts between party leaders and accusations of nepotism, while former members complain that decisions are now imposed by Rome rather than engineered from scratch.

Five Star has also unseated MPs since 2018, according to a YouTrend study, losing more than half of its MPs and 45 percent of its senators since 2018.

Among the defectors is Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, a former party leader from outside Naples who put a more professional face on the movement, founded in 2009 by irreverent, combative comedian Beppe Grillo.

Di Maio quit in June along with dozens of lawmakers, accusing current five-star leader Giuseppe Conte of trying to thwart Draghi’s pro-European, Atlanticist agenda.

A month later, Conte withdrew his support for Draghi’s government, sparking a crisis that led to snap elections.

Conte – a former law professor who was installed as technocrat prime minister after the 2018 vote before being replaced by Draghi – has tried to save Five Star from oblivion by emphasizing its anti-establishment roots.

“We are the more progressive force, that’s obvious,” he emphasized, referring to the party’s fight for a minimum wage of nine euros an hour.

This year’s Five Star platform also includes tax breaks for hiring young people, protections for indebted homeowners, credit for green construction projects and opposition to oil and gas drilling.

Universal “citizen income” remains a flagship policy that the party says has lifted a million Italians out of poverty – many of them in Naples.

More than 161,000 families, or over 13 percent of the population, in the greater Naples area received an average of €637 from the program in June, according to the latest figures from the National Institute for Social Security.

But the handout has been attacked for encouraging unemployment and fraud. Mafiosi, prisoners, non-citizens and others are said to have illegally received up to 40 million euros in the past year.

Back in the alleys of Naples’ Sanita neighborhood, where fading obituaries cover crumbling walls and fruit stands remind shoppers they can pay with their welfare debit card, resident Giuseppe Capuozzo vowed to “never vote for Five Star again.”

“It was a disaster. Economically nothing. They talk, talk, talk,” said Capuozzo, his white scooter loaded with shopping bags.

Five Star’s anti-poverty efforts may have helped his neighbors, but was it fair that he paid taxes on his stagnant pension when they didn’t?

“But we, who will help us?” he asked.