Switzerland’s parliamentary elections on Sunday marked a strong shift to the right. According to extrapolations by the polling agency gfs.bern, the right-wing populist UDC, which has been the largest party for more than twenty years, received 29 percent of the votes. This represents a 3.4 percentage point increase, which is higher than predicted. The Greens, on the other hand, had a disaster.
The Green Party would end up with 9.2 percent of the votes (-4 percentage points), and the Green-Liberal Party with 7.1 percent (-0.7 percent). “The bitter thing is that the climate has lost,” Aline Trede, the leader of the Greens, told TV channel SRF.
For the UDC, the immigration theme brought success. “The people have spoken, a course correction is urgently needed,” said Vice-President Marcel Dettling. The UDC campaigned for border controls and the return of asylum seekers.
Yet the elections do not change the government. These are the same parties that have long been the largest in Switzerland and have formed a government together for decades, including the UDC.
During the election campaign, the UDC repeatedly played on the population’s feelings of fear and loss. The party waged a campaign against foreigners, warned against rapprochement with the EU, and several representatives see themselves as embroiled in a war to preserve Swiss culture. The party is in favor of limiting social spending and development aid in favor of a stronger army. The party has had the most seats in parliament since 1999.
The UDC is paradoxically both a government and a protest party. In addition to the UDC, the government includes the social democratic SP, the liberal FDP, and the Christian democratic Die Mitte. In government, the UDC is right-wing conservative and made compromises. In the election campaign, the party is a right-wing populist and, as of now, stands for measures against immigration and stricter neutrality, with, for example, a ban on sanctions against Russia.
The Social Democrats of the SP remain the second party in Switzerland, with 17.4 percent of the votes. The centrist party Die Mitte (or Le Centre/Alleanza del Centro) overtakes the liberal FDP as the third largest party. They both achieved about 15 percent.
5.5 million Swiss were called to vote. The turnout was barely 46 percent. One of the reasons for this is that the Swiss are presented with referendums four times a year with numerous questions. Parliamentary elections thus have less of a ‘valve function’ to keep the government on track. /TelegraphNews
