Swiss election and referendum maps

[Hash]

I've made a number of maps of Swiss elections and obviously of the most interesting  votations/referendums.

I could go with election maps dating from 1919 first, but I prefer starting with the most interesting referendums:

[Hash]

1959 vote of female's suffrage which was rejected with 67% or so against.



Only Basel-Stadt was under 60% NO.

[Хahar 🤔]

I feel bad for the French Swiss for having to live in that place.

[Boris]

It's pretty amusing that blacks in Mississippi gained voting rights a quarter of a century before women in Appenzell Innerrhoden

[danny]

Are you going to do the 1971 referendum now?

[Hash]

Swiss stuff is fun. Here are some old goodies:

1848: Constitution (73% yes)


1866: legal equality for Jews (53% yes)


1866: freedom of conscience and religion (51% no)


1872: new constitution (51% no)


1874: Constitution (63% yes)

[Leftbehind]

Wait, women's suffrage got rejected in 1959?!?!

Thanks for the maps!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wait, women's suffrage got rejected in 1959?!?!

The marvels of direct democracy...

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

1959 vote of female's suffrage which was rejected with 67% or so against.



Only Basel-Stadt was under 60% NO.

I'm embarrassed I ever had respect for this place. I feel like PMing people to apologize.

[SNJ1985]

A simple map of the largest party result in each canton in the 2007 National Council election.



Blue = FDP/PLR
Green = SVP/UDC
Orange = CVP/PDC
Red = SPS/PSS

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

I feel bad for the French Swiss for having to live in that place.

France itself was actually rather late to the party... they didn't have it until 1945.

[SNJ1985]

2002 referendum on UN membership:

[SNJ1985]

1992 referendum on ratification of the EEA agreement:

[politicus]

Those are great maps Thomas, but it would be interesting if you added a few lines on the reasons for the yes/no distribution in each of them. There is a pretty clear general pattern, but plenty to elaborate on.

[SNJ1985]

Thanks. I got the map template from Wikimedia Commons; and there are a few parts that look weird (like the area above Solothurn and next to Basel-Landschaft - that area actually consists of both Basel-Landschaft and Solothurn territory. I've been coloring it in as part of Basel-Landschaft, since it seems to have more territory there). Perhaps I should switch to a different, more precise map in the future.

As for the patterns, ZuWo could probably explain them better than I could. The clearest pattern to me is that the French-speaking Swiss are more internationalist than the German-speaking and Italian-speaking Swiss.

[SNJ1985]

Here's a link to the map template I've been using and modifying; originally uploaded by Ojw at en.wikipedia [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], obtained through Wikimedia Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-Switzerland.png

Anyway, here's a map of the 2005 referendum on joining the Schengen Area. Again, the French cantons are most in favor.

[palandio]

As for the patterns, ZuWo could probably explain them better than I could. The clearest pattern to me is that the French-speaking Swiss are more internationalist than the German-speaking and Italian-speaking Swiss.

When it comes to explaining the patterns on the 19th century maps, take a look at these maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sonderbund_War_Map_English.png
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:CH_Religionen_1800.jpg
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Karte_Religionen_der_Schweiz_2014.01.01.png
In German-speaking Switzerland there was a strong divide between Free-mindeds/Radicals (dominant in Reformed areas) and Conservatives (dominant in many Catholic areas).

It may seem that this divide has lasted until today, since ex-Sonderbund cantons like the Inner Swiss cantons and Appenzell-Innerrhoden are still the most conservative cantons today. What canton maps don't show though is that on the district level some Reformed-majority districts like Obersimmental (Canton Berne) and Kulm (Canton Aargau) are even more conservative. The divide in German-speaking Switzerland today is to a large extent urban-rural, religion plays a strong role in party politics, though not as strong as in the 19th century.

[Upsilon]

2002 referendum on UN membership:

You should correct your map because Zug voted yes...

I think the 2 most interesting votes of the last decades to analyse are this one on the UNO in 2002 and another one on the raise of the VAT in september 2009. Both divide the cantons in two almost equal parts.

About the religion, I feel that here in the French part, few people care about being catholic or reformed. And in these cantons there are few difference between the vote of catholics cantons and the reformed one : Jura votes about the same than Neuchâtel, Fribourg votes about the same as Vaud... Perhaps Fribourg is slightly more conservative than Vaud but it is much more related to the German minority in this canton than to the religion...

[Upsilon]

I think both CVP and FDP became less isolationists since the last decades and this explains the raise of the SVP

[ingemann]

I feel bad for the French Swiss for having to live in that place.

France itself was actually rather late to the party... they didn't have it until 1945.

Well if you look at the map, only the Calvinist Swiss-French voted in favour, while the Catholic Swiss-French voted against.

[palandio]

About the religion, I feel that here in the French part, few people care about being catholic or reformed. And in these cantons there are few difference between the vote of catholics cantons and the reformed one : Jura votes about the same than Neuchâtel, Fribourg votes about the same as Vaud... Perhaps Fribourg is slightly more conservative than Vaud but it is much more related to the German minority in this canton than to the religion...

True, when it comes to voting behaviour in referendums and opinions on political issues.
On the other hand when it comes to party politics, the PDC is still much more popular among Catholics than among non-Catholics and therefore much stronger in Jura and Fribourg than in Neuchâtel and Vaud. A moderate center-right Jura Catholic and a moderate center-right Neuchâtel Protestant who agree on every political issue will often vote for PDC and PLR respectively just out of tradition, because PDC is the generic option for the former and PLR for the latter.

In German-speaking Switzerland the main divide today when it comes to the issues is not religious anymore, even though the map might still look like that. It's mainly urban-rural, but you will see that mainly on district maps because conservative Catholic Appenzell-Innerrhoden is a canton on its own and conservative Protestant Obersimmental is not.
What I wonder about is that some traditional CVP strongholds tend to vote according to the SVP paroles in referendums more often than according to CVP paroles. The SVP would seem a better fit for these cantons than the federal centrist CVP. Yet it is still difficult for the SVP to make a breakthrough in these cantons (except Schwyz).

About Luzern. There is chunk of Sondernbund cantons that seem to vote rather isolationalist, but are firmly Catholic. However, the most isolationalist party SVP has been strong in Ref cantons. Is CVP more or less isolationalist than SVP or FDP. Or are the differences more about assimilation and immigration matters.

The SVP is clearly the most isolationist party of the major parties. Taking a look at maps on the district level in Reformed cantons the SVP strongholds usually are strongly supportive of "isolationist" referendums. But often you can't detect it on the canton level.
It is true that many CVP voters in traditional rural CVP strongholds hold more isolationist views than the federal chapter of the party they support. And some of these rural outposts stand out on the canton map because they are cantons on its own. (Only 0.2% of the Swiss population lives in Appenzell-Innerrhoden.)

[Upsilon]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Exactly

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm native from Valais, and there I know several people that say that they agree with SVP's on nationalist and security topics, but still stay faithful to CVP for economic issues and other topics. Switzerland become so prosperous under economical policies based on the consensus mainstream CVP-FDP. We never had big economical crisis that challenged this consensus (unlike UK in the 70s).

[Upsilon]

I think it's because between 1850 and 1950 CVP was socially too conservative for these people. For example, in village where I was born, several people that voted FDP in the past were those who "didn't go to the mass".

[SNJ1985]

You should correct your map because Zug voted yes...

You're right; sorry about that. I have corrected it.

[SNJ1985]

Here's a map of the 2011 gun control referendum by district.

I credit Wikipedia user Tschubby for creating the blank map I used to make this, which can be found here.



Edit: I accidentally colored Gersau green. It's fixed now.