The Swiss populist right won the legislative elections on Sunday October 22 with 29.2% of the vote, according to initial projections. That of the gfs.bern institute on behalf of the Swiss Broadcasting and Television Company shows a strengthening of the Democratic Union of the Center (UDC), far ahead of the Socialists (PSS), the second party in the lower house of Parliament , who received just over 17% of the vote, up very slightly.
This projection also shows that the center and the Liberal-Radicaux (PLR) are fighting for third place, at around 14.5% of the vote, while the Greens fall to 9.1% of the vote and Vert’liberales to 7.1 %. “It’s a disappointment,” reacted the vice-president of the Greens, Nicolas Walder, stressing that “it’s about two thirds of the green wave” of the 2019 elections, which has ebbed. “I believe that the population has been led towards other priorities,” such as purchasing power and insecurity, he said. “It’s a great satisfaction,” reacted the vice-president of the UDC, Céline Amaudruz, on the set of Swiss public television RTS.
The Alpine country, which has some 8.8 million inhabitants, renews its two hundred deputies of the National Council (lower house) by proportional vote, and its forty-six senators of the Council of States (upper house) by majority vote. The composition of the upper house – under the control of the liberal right and the center – hardly varies over the course of the elections. On December 13, all parliamentarians will designate the seven members of the Federal Council (government), within which the first four parties share the seven ministerial portfolios. The Greens have little chance of obtaining their first seat there based on the polls.
For “strict neutrality”, against “mass immigration”
The SVP campaigned around defending the “strict neutrality” of Switzerland, which is not part of the European Union (EU), sharply criticizing Bern’s alignment with sanctions taken by the EU after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the party above all focused its campaign around its favorite theme, the fight against “mass immigration”, which it accuses of being at the origin of crime, the explosion of social costs or even of the increase in electricity consumption.
“The situation in Switzerland is serious, we have mass immigration, we have big problems with people seeking asylum. The security situation is no longer the same as before,” Thomas Aeschi, president of the UDC parliamentary group, said on Sunday. “There are many people in Switzerland who are afraid that the situation will get worse,” he said. During the campaign, the party was accused of flirting with the far right, but the discourse of the UDC – the leading party since 1999 – continues to appeal to the population. The Swiss are among the richest in the world, with an unemployment rate of around 2% and a very high GDP per capita.
The UDC had set itself the objective of recovering the approximately 100,000 voters lost four years ago, party president Marco Chiesa told Agence France-Presse before the elections. The bet seems to have paid off, since the result is close to the 29.4% obtained in 2015, in the midst of the European migration crisis. It was then not only its best score, but also “the best score of all parties in Switzerland since the introduction of proportionality in 1919”, according to Sean Müller, professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne.