Re: Swiss elections and referenda - New Federal Councilor(s) election 7 December

[Tender Branson]

Is Europe Elect's classification of SVP in Reform Europe (= Liberals) a joke ?

[Tender Branson]

Turnout is much lower in the already-counted cantons:

https://www.wahlen.admin.ch/en/

Down 5% on average, from 48.5% in 2015.

[Estrella]

Is Europe Elect's classification of SVP in Reform Europe (= Liberals) a joke ?

Might be a relic from when the SVP was a de facto agrarian party - many of those joined ALDE renew europe.

But ALDE/RE has always been a bit of a trash collector - most hilariously, one of their members is Bulgaria's DPS, which is basically AKP Abroad. They also contain Estonia's whatever-but-definitely-not-liberal populist Centre Party, Lithuanian Labor Party, or Fianna Fáil. IIRC, at one point, Slovakia's now-defunct authoritarian-nationalist HZDS was also a member.

[Tender Branson]

In St. Gallen for example (a very large canton), turnout dropped from 46.5% to 42% - which is kinda bad and surprising, because the Green surge would have suggested more (younger) voters today.

[bigic]

Is Europe Elect's classification of SVP in Reform Europe (= Liberals) a joke ?

Might be a relic from when the SVP was a de facto agrarian party - many of those joined ALDE renew europe.

But ALDE/RE has always been a bit of a trash collector - most hilariously, one of their members is Bulgaria's DPS, which is basically AKP Abroad. They also contain Estonia's whatever-but-definitely-not-liberal populist Centre Party, Lithuanian Labor Party, or Fianna Fáil. IIRC, at one point, Slovakia's now-defunct authoritarian-nationalist HZDS was also a member.

SVP is in the ALDE group of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe - I'm surprised they didn't kick them out.
As for HZDS, they weren't members of ALDE, but of the European Democratic Party, which sits in the same group as ALDE.
BTW ANO of Andrej Babiš is also in ALDE...

[Tender Branson]

In the biggest canton of Switzerland, Zürich (1.5 million people), the Greens and Green-Libs gain about 7% each.

Both have ca. 14%, so 28% in total. That would be more than the SVP there (27%, -3%).

Turnout in Zürich, with almost everything counted, is 3% down compared with 2015.

Roughly the same situation in the canton Bern, the 2nd largest (1 million people). Turnout down ca. 2-3%, with the two Green parties not gaining as much as in Zürich.

[Tender Branson]

The German areas are counting faster than the French ones:

https://www.wahlen.admin.ch/en/

[Keep Calm and ...]

https://twitter.com/gfsbern/status/1185950672707080197

Edit:

SVP 25.6 -3.8
SP 16.5 -2.3
FDP 15.5 -0.9
GPS 13.0 +5.9
CVP 11.8 +0.2
GLP 7.6 +3.0
BDP 2.4 -1.7
EVP 2.2 +0.3
Übrige 3.8 -0.6
Lega 0.8 -0.2
PdA 0.6 +-0
MCG 0.3 +-0

[Estrella]

Might be a stupid question, but how do the elections work in Graubünden? Wikipedia has some maps of party strength by district, and the whole of Graubünden is grayed out on them, and captioned "anderes Wahlsystem" (different electoral system).

[parochial boy]

Some of the swings in Romandie are (by Swiss standards) absolutely crazy. The combined left up 10% in Geneva and Vaud. PS managing to be the largest party in Fribourg and Jura and the left winning an absolute majority of the vote in Jura as well as in Neuchâtel (and three out of four seats!). So much for Romandie trending right.

Overall, very happy! A little bit bittersweet about the PS, but the right wing majorty has been absolutely crushed - 17 seats lost! and the UDC gets its worse result since the beginning of the century, the pundit class were saying losing 3% would be a big sign that the game is up for them, and they lost almost 4%. Also, the combined left gets 68 seats, that's the second most ever, just one behind 2003.

Also very hard to deny the Greens a Federal Council seat after this.

Might be a stupid question, but how do the elections work in Graubünden? Wikipedia has some maps of party strength by district, and the whole of Graubünden is grayed out on them, and captioned "anderes Wahlsystem" (different electoral system).

For the most part its a sort of "first x past the post" by constituency - which makes talking about party vote shares a little bit meaningless

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Is it possible PS supporters voted tactically for the Greens to help them get a Federal Council seat?

[parochial boy]

Unlikely to be honest, the Federal Council situation is far too complicated that people would be thinking about it as a primary reason to vote. It's always been the case that the Greens and PS share an electorate of people who are essentially happy to vote for either party. So in a year where ecology was on the agenda, it was always going to difficult for the PS to hold on to a lot of those voters. Add in the loss of some centrist pro-EU voters who don't like the PS's current stance on the framework agreement and you have an explanation for the result.

On the other hand though, I think a lot of the "death of the CVP" discussion did probably convince a number of people to turn out for them.

[Keep Calm and ...]

gfs.bern / SRF 3. Nationale Hochrechnung 20 Uhr

percent, seats:

SVP 25.8 -3.6, 54 -11
SP 16.6 -2.2, 38 -5
FDP 15.3 -1.1, 29 -4
GPS 13.0 +5.9, 28 +17
CVP 11.4 -0.2, 25 -3
GLP 7.9 +3.3, 16 +9
BDP 2.4 -1.7, 3 -4
EVP 2.2 +0.3, 3 +1
Lega 0.8 -0.2, 1 -1
PdA 0.6 +-0, 1 +-0
MCG 0.2 -0.1, 0 -1
Übrige 3.8 -0.6, 2 +2 (EDU 1, solidaritéS 1)

[urutzizu]

I would be really interested what the distribution by Age looks like. Perhaps another sign that the outright dismissal of the climate issue by RWPP, and just riding the Immigration Issue does get you that minority of the electorate, but no much further. The road is not really leading very far for the SVP in this kind of an environment. We might be seeing in Europe right now is the "stagnation" phase of the populist right. Although identifying cross-border trends is of course difficult and some countries e.g. Finland are seemingly bucking the trend.

Also what is the difference between typical SVP and Lega Voters in Ticino and between UDC and MCG Voters in Geneva?

[Tender Branson]

The share of women increases from 32% to 42% in the new National Council.

[parochial boy]

I would be really interested what the distribution by Age looks like. Perhaps another sign that the outright dismissal of the climate issue by RWPP, and just riding the Immigration Issue does get you that minority of the electorate, but no much further. The road is not really leading very far for the SVP in this kind of an environment. We might be seeing in Europe right now is the "stagnation" phase of the populist right. Although identifying cross-border trends is of course difficult and some countries e.g. Finland are seemingly bucking the trend.

Also what is the difference between typical SVP and Lega Voters in Ticino and between UDC and MCG Voters in Geneva?

There should be some exit polling around at some stage, and Selects do their big electoral study which will come out eventually. But the pre-election polling was all pretty consistently showing the Greens doing about twice as well with the under 30s than over 65s; and the GLP having a similar, but not quite as stark profile. The UDC were basically the reverse, twice as high with older voters; and there wasn't really any consistent pattern with the other parties. Judging by what happened in the election, I would imagine there's a good chance the the Greens were actually the first party with the under 25/30s.

I dunno about what sort of trends we can pull from this, if any, though - Switzerland was one of the first countries where Greens established themselves as an electoral force, and arguably the first country were right-nationalism became a political force (in the 70s) and eventually an election winning one. So it could be that it's a bit ahead of the game here; or maybe an example of how the agenda can be wrestled away from what the far right wants it to be*.

Re-the SVP take on the issue, there was some suggestion that they might have been pulling back some voters from the FDP who didn't like the Liberals' "green" turn, but again, the actual results were worse for the SVP than the polling suggested, so hard to make a take.

As for the MCG and Lega. The MCG's voters are poorer, principally; and much more likely to be of immigrant background themselves. MCG overperform in downmarket and immigrant heavy communes like Vernier, Onex or Meyrin much more than the UDC do. Whereas if you look at, say, the billionaire paradise of Cologny, the UDC overperformed their cantonal result, but the MCG were much weaker. In recent years, the MCG have been almost left wing in their attitude to things like the welfare state or tax-and-spend; so regularly vote with the left on issues like pension or healthcare reforms. There is also something of a different issues focus, as the MCG are less overtly nationalistic than the UDC, are more focussed on the concrete issue that is the frontaliers thing.

Lega have a similarity in that they tend to do better among lower income people, and are more "social" than the UDC. In Ticino though, they tend to be more virulent on the border questions than the UDC are - and also, whereas the UDC are nationalist, Lega tend to be more of an outlet for Ticinese regional angst about being ignored and forgotten by the rest of the country.

*Possibly the best moment of today - Oskar Freysinger on RTS ranting about how Switzerland was going to turn into a "Communist Country" because the Greens had "emotionally manipulated" the public into being worried about the climate. Oh yes, Oskar, the UDC never did anything like that did they? And you live in Valais, you'd actually literally have to be blind not to see the effects of climate change happening right in front of you.

[parochial boy]

final Conseil National results - seats


Popular vote


PS, Greens and the radical left win a combined 69 seats; the joint highest number that the left has ever won in a Swiss Federal election. UDC have their worst result since 1999, PLR their joint worst and PDC and PS both experience their worst results since the introductionof Proportional Representation. The PBD are all but dead and the two  ecologist parties win 21% of the vote together, the Greens even leapfroging the UDC, who are now only the 4th largest party in French speaking Switzerland. New era.

[parochial boy]

Largest party by Commune courtesy of Wikipedia

My home town was even won by the Greens; I don't think the combined Liberal-Radical score has ever been outdone by another party there before.

And by canton


The return of the colours

[Zinneke]

Thanks for all your updates, parochial.

Do you think Europe and relationship to EU will come back on the table as the Left gathers more momentum? Did the SVP "losses" against the EU play a part in their slump?

[parochial boy]

Thanks for all your updates, parochial.

Do you think Europe and relationship to EU will come back on the table as the Left gathers more momentum? Did the SVP "losses" against the EU play a part in their slump?

Well the EU framework agreement was the elephant on the table throughout the campaign. the SVP did desperately try to bring it on to the agenda, but its really too much of an abstract concept at the moment for people to really have any conception of it - and it was kind of lucky that the for some reason, the EU decided that it had, er, pressing concerns than negotiating with the Swiss. (and tbf yeah, there probably is an element of people having had enough of the SVP's sh!t on the issue - as seen in those referendum defeats).

Probably the party that got "hurt" most by the issue was the PS. They've been going through a big battle between the trade unions and the europhiles over some of the posted worker directives in the current draft agreement. So the terrible result they had in Zurich in particular, where there is a big liberal wing within the party, was probably down to voters decamping over the unambiguously pro-EU GreenLiberals.

As for future relations, well, the Greens have a similar kind of ambiguous position to the PS at the moment - but obviously the rise of the GLP puts a bigger Europhile wing in parliament; and obviously fewer SVP MP's means fewer eurosceptics.

Probably the biggest chance for "improved" relations is the outlet to replace Ignazio Cassis, the Foreign affairs minister, on the federal council. He lost a lot of credibility though being widely seen as having dropped the ball on negoatiating with the EU, so getting anyone else; especially from the Greens of GLP; to replace him would probably help soften things up.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Trouble is, if the Greens were to replace Cassis wouldn't the Right heavily resist that because it means the SVP-FDP lose their majority?

Could we even see an expansion in the Council?

[parochial boy]

Well they don't have an electoral majority any more, so they don't really have much to complain about - and also means that as long as the PDC came on board, and the half dozen or so PBD and PEV MPs would almost certainly go with them, they wouldn't have much choice other than to accept a Green federal councillor. Honestly it's almost in the PDC's interest to do that, as it would mean them getting back their role as key pivot between left and right, rather than having to be reluctant allies of the PS.

Although having said that, it really depends on how the Conseil des États second round races go. The Greens were expected to get between 0-1 seats there, but are now looking at wining 5-6 seats, and being a force in both chambers gives them even more of a case.

I can't see the Federal Council expanding, it would have to go through a referendum and the process would take years and years anyway.

As a total aside, some of the results from Romandie look completely insane. Even outside the big cities, there are all these little villages in the Jura or even in right-wing heartlands like the Broye or the Chablais where the red-green parties have surged by 10-15% and are suddenly voting like Geneva did 4 years ago. It's a complete change in what these places ever looked like.

[Good Habit]

Trouble is, if the Greens were to replace Cassis wouldn't the Right heavily resist that because it means the SVP-FDP lose their majority?

]
Well, as they dont have a majority in parliament, why should they have a majority in government? And on many issues, Svp and FDP dont get along with each other that Well..., so vheavy resistance' would be that effektive. The question is more: will sp and cvp go along with a quick change, or will they balk, as future changes could as well effect them (and thus, delaing change is a Form of self Protektion) and would the glp really support a gp member..?

Could we even see an expansion in the Council?

An Expansion would require a constitutional amendment, including a popular vote.. Has been discussed for many years, but not really intensely, so, likely, is still decades away..

[Tender Branson]

The canton of St. Gallen has officially dismissed the idea of annexing the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, saying that such a move would only be possible if the Vorarlbergers "have their human rights violated in a serious manner".

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000110623132/vorarlberg-als-schweizer-kanton-von-st-galler-regierung-abgelehnt

[sopojarwo]

Nice thread, parochial

Glancing through the map i see PDA winning some district around French border, standing out in the sea of blue and dark green. Is there are some unique voting behaviour in that area ?